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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27949190">WEIRD TALE FROM OBLIVION</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/leepepper/pseuds/leepepper'>leepepper</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Romance, Cults, Demons, Dungeons &amp; Dragons References, F/M, Gen, M/M, Medicinal Drug Use, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Recreational Drug Use, Slice of Life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:41:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,521</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27949190</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/leepepper/pseuds/leepepper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxas, the owner of a local comic book store, is a pretty unlucky guy. Furnished with a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder and a looming curse that seems to touch everything in his life, he just can't seem to get a break. That's when he meets Xion and her group of Dungeons and Dragons cultists and everything gets turned upside down. Will he be able to make it out of things alive? Will his best friend Axel be okay in the end? And who really is Xion? Find out in this weird tale from Oblivion.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Axel/Roxas (Kingdom Hearts), Axel/Xion (Kingdom Hearts), Roxas &amp; Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Roxas/Xion (Kingdom Hearts)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. ACT ONE</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this thing has strange origins that i'd rather not divulge. i'm ready to answer any and all questions about the plot, though! hope you guys enjoy it.</p><p>also - i tend to write my kh fanfiction as if everything that happened after kh2 never happened. that includes when i use characters that appeared post-kh2 like xion. whoops!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h1>
  <em> ACT ONE </em>
</h1><p> </p><p>The town is called Oblivion. Technically it’s not even really a town - it’s just a suburb of Portland, Oregon, a nondescript unincorporated nothing in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Roxas has been living here since he turned fifteen, and when dear old dad died and left him an inheritance of half a million dollars, he - aspiring to comic book artist superstardom on the Internet and beyond - used a hefty chunk of the cash to buy the comic store in Oblivion, Oregon. It’s been doing pretty great, you know, but it hasn’t quite taken off the way Roxas had hoped yet. Only kids and neckbeards from the other suburbs of Portland come to visit on anything resembling a regular basis, which isn’t really a good feeling. Last week a woman one could actually consider beautiful came inside and looked around for five minutes before asking Roxas in a low, somewhat embarrassed tone, “Could you help me find something, quote, cool? My son is autistic and he just loves these comics, and I, well, I have no clue what I’m doing here!”</p><p>Roxas felt something like a twinge of pain within him as he talked to this poor, beautiful woman about what comics her son liked. He was a youngster, so Roxas found him some good <em> Spider-Man </em> s and <em> Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaurs </em>, and he guesses he felt sort of good about himself for landing a fifteen-dollar purchase and forging a tenuous connection with another human being. Then he remembered how strange and bizarre life had recently become, checked every lightbulb in the shop, and promptly felt like shit again. </p><p>At home, after work, Roxas checks every lock and latch on every door and window in his house. It’s a nice house; a New Traditional Craftsman with a garage and a spacious master and guest bedroom. This is another perk of having a dead rich dad, though Roxas supposes he’d rather have his father alive than his fair-to-middling comic shop and his nice, contemporary house with his father dead. Roxas stands in his great living room and listens to the electronic noises of the house and the neighborhood around him - the buzzing of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the crackle of car tires down asphalt outside and the dogs barking like crazy next door and the air conditioner as a low din beneath everything else. He waits until his heart quiets, then goes to get something to eat. </p><p>His doctor says he has obsessive-compulsive disorder. That’s a really difficult diagnosis if Roxas understands correctly. He takes an SSRI once a day every morning to help with the mind-numbing depression that comes with having a brain like his, and it helps a little, but he still has to do what he has to do every day. The lingering in the kitchen and the bathroom to see if the faucets are fully off, and checking the doors and the windows all the time, and twisting lightbulbs in so tightly he threatened to break them sometimes, and opening and closing the pickle, jam, and mayonnaise jars.</p><p>At night, he dreams of Sora, his twin brother, with tubes plugged into his body. In the morning he’ll go visit him in the hospital, say hi and talk to him about all the things you talk to someone in a coma about so that they keep having stimuli to internally react to or whatever, but at night, he just dreams of his brother lying still, inert, like he was always meant to be unconscious. Sora was such a sleepyhead growing up, after all. </p><p>Roxas gets up after a vision of a blanket ghost piercing the veil and brushes his teeth and does something about his hair. In the mirror, his doppelganger seems to move a step ahead of him, always two seconds before his every movement. He decides he needs to call Axel today, because Axel would know what to do about all of this mess. He turns the light off in the bathroom and goes to get dressed and really start his day.</p><p>When Roxas gets to The Shop (because yes, feeling tongue-in-cheek and clever he named his comic book store The Shop), he does his usual routine of checking all the doors and the windows and the lightbulbs and such. A dark cloud hovers over him, obscuring his vision and pressing headaches into his brain. Then he properly opens up shop, knowing Naminé the regular girl will come in at any moment to get things started. Finally he finds the telephone near the register and dials Axel’s number, knowing it by heart at this point.</p><p>“Dick’s Whorehouse - you got the dough, we got the ho,” Axel says into the phone by way of answering it, knowing whoever is on the line probably puts up with this shit on a regular basis (or just not caring otherwise).</p><p>“Hey, Axel,” Roxas says, rubbing his head and hoping that’ll ease his burgeoning migraine a little bit. “That was a really good one this time - were you sitting on that for a long time?”</p><p>“No, man, I pulled that one directly out of my rectum,” Axel says easily. The line is crackly on his end; Roxes guesses that he’s probably driving around in that old van of his. “What’s going on, angelface? Is there any mess desperately begging to be cleaned up or do you just like to hear my voice?”</p><p>For a beat, Roxas feels intensely, horrifically guilty. Then he remembers that Axel knows and indulges him willingly, not out of pity. “I keep seeing things. I figure I need to get out and do something interesting, so I’m calling to ask you to come pick me up for lunch today.”</p><p>“Lunch today, lunch today…” Axel sounds thoughtful, which he nearly never is genuinely. Axel doesn’t think, he just talks, which is what he’s doing right now. “I don’t know if I can work you into lunch, kid. I’ve got a job across town and Demyx is bringing actual fucking ribs and between all the running around I don’t know how I’m going to be able to come get you.”</p><p>“Please, Axel,” Roxas pleads, listening to himself and finding that he doesn’t quite like the sound of desperation on him. “I need to get out of my head and you’re the only person who knows how to make me do that. You’re my best friend.”</p><p>The best friend card always seems to work. Sure enough…</p><p>“Alright, kid, but no bitching about my driving. I gotta make it to Portland by noon-thirty so the speed limit is optional, you hear me?”</p><p>Roxas manages a smile. Small victories. “Thanks, Axel.”</p><p>He spends the morning working on his book and avoiding talk with Naminé. A few kids come in and buy some X-Men issues, and Roxas sketches their likenesses onto bystanders in a big grand fight scene. The reader probably doesn’t want to hear about what Roxas’ book concerns, as it truthfully isn’t that good; for the sake of clarity, though, the reader will note that The Book - called, appropriately and quite cleverly, The Book - tells tales from the land of Gloom, where superheroes and villains regularly do battle in suits of armor and mecha contraptions that grow progressively more complex with each chapter. Roxas has been working on The Book for as long as he’s owned The Shop, and they’ve been about as successful as each other. </p><p>It’s around 11:15 when Axel comes strolling into the shop, looking frazzled. It’s hard not to notice someone like Axel, who stands at around six feet three inches and sports dreadlocks the color of a candy apple; who perpetually wears leather and likes to get face tattoos for fun. Roxas, as usual, finds himself completely hypnotized by his friend when he enters The Shop in a rush, approaching the front counter with a touch of urgency.</p><p>“C’mon, Roxas, keys are still in the ignition,” Axel says, drumming a short rhythm against the countertop.</p><p>“Wow, I don’t even have time to do my checks before we go?” Roxas asks. Naminé looks on with sort of thinly-veiled interest, her being faintly acquainted with Axel in the way everyone in Oblivion is without knowing him that well.</p><p>“No, angelface, we have to leave right now.” Axel points emphatically at the ground as he says this. He gives Roxas a knowing look. “It’ll be better for you not to indulge that habit right now.”</p><p>“It’s not a habit, it’s literally a crippling mental illness,” Roxas notes wryly, gathering up his sketchbook and his various pens and pencils into the messenger bag he keeps behind the counter. </p><p>“Tomato, to-mah-to,” Axel retorts with a shrug. As soon as Roxas is stepping out from behind the register, he’s headed for the door like a storm moving along a warm coastline, opening said door to the fresh and perfect outside with a flourish. “Come on, kiddo, I’m running late!”</p><p>Axel’s van is as nondescript as he is conspicuous. A white two-seater with no discernible make or model and a moderately cracked windshield, it is parked literally on the curb when Roxas leaves The Shop. Axel keeps everything imaginable in the back - furniture, a ladder, power tools, calculators, spare clothes, toothbrushes, light reading, miniature scales, baggies of marijuana, probably even someone’s teeth if you looked hard enough. This van is possibly Axel’s most prized possession, beat up and ugly as it is, and Roxas has spent many an afternoon riding around in it as Axel’s co-pilot. Anxious as he is, wound up over not being able to do his checks, Roxas feels at home and safe as soon as he slides into the passenger seat with Axel behind the steering wheel. He fiddles with the passenger side window, cranking it open and shut about seven times.</p><p>“Dude, stop that,” Axel says as he reverses out of his parking spot and gets on the road proper. He doesn’t say it with genuine irritation, as he has never hated Roxas for his deficits and his shortcomings; he’s just looking out for Roxas’ best interests, and checking him for his compulsions is one of myriad ways Axel is a good friend.</p><p>Roxas has known Axel since high school. He’d moved to Oblivion with his dad and Sora his freshman year, and then Axel was a junior with dreadlocks not yet dyed peel-your-face-off red who cut up in their shared elective theatre class. They sat together in the back of the classroom, and while Roxas attempted to retreat further into himself - an adolescent hermit - Axel made it his mission to open him up and make a proper friend out of him. He entertained the class with his improvisational chops, singing and dancing like Wayne Brady to anyone who would listen and laugh at him. He gave Roxas his phone number in case he ever wanted to hang out, and soon enough, they were smoking weed in Axel’s parents’ basement on a regular basis, talking about art and sex and which cannabis strains they liked the best. Roxas believes that meeting Axel was a fixed point in his life, after which he’d never been the same. Even as his whole life fell apart between his dad dying and Sora slipping into a coma, Axel was there with him. It’s not easy finding people like that who just stick to you.</p><p>They drive across Oblivion to Portland proper. Apparently a young couple is moving into a bungalow in Little Vancouver and Axel has been enlisted to help move furniture along with another high school friend (Demyx - a good-for-nothing stoner if there ever was one). Roxas figures he’ll help with the heavy lifting and then sit back and sketch his friends whenever he has free time. He has no idea how he’s going to fare in a foreign house full of so many doors, windows, and lightbulbs.</p><p>Because of his van, Axel is able to have his fingers in every pie - which is incidentally exactly the way he likes it. He knows just about anything about everything and everyone, which makes him such an asset to a community in need of cheap manual labor and marijuana, the latter of which Axel deals liberally. As soon as Axel and Roxas drive up to the cute, squat bungalow in their busted drug van, they see Demyx already standing in the front yard with his ukulele out, singing some silly song.</p><p>“Oh my God, look at this faggot,” Axel grumbles as he turns into the driveway, beaming hilariously wide at Demyx through the cracked windshield. Roxas permits himself to laugh (Axel is the only person he really laughs around), getting out of the van and approaching Demyx on the lawn. </p><p>“Hey, friendo,” Demyx says casually mid-song, still strumming a tune on his uke but not singing anymore. “You should check out the couple, bro. They’re like fire and ice, and the lady is ice!”</p><p>“Axel said something about lunch?” Roxas says, adjusting his messenger bag strap across his body. “I think he mentioned ribs.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah!” This is what finally gets Demyx to stop playing. He leads Roxas across the yard into the little carport alongside the house, where there are two Styrofoam plates of ribs and potato salad on a park bench-style table. Demyx gives Roxas a sheepish look. “I didn’t know you were coming so I only got two plates. Axel will probably share with you - he’s totally in love with you, you know.”</p><p>“He literally just called you a faggot,” Roxas remarks, watching with well-hidden glee as Demyx’s face falls and turns into one huge, childish pout. Axel comes walking over at that moment, holding gloves for all three of them to wear during the heavy-lifting. He pats Demyx on the back.</p><p>“Hey, Dem,” he says, then zeroes in on the ribs with his eyes. “Oh my God, I love you, you’re my best friend, I owe you like twenty bucks extra and a nugget for this,” he’s going on and on without stopping for air, picking up his plate and making a big deal out of sniffing his food. All of a sudden, he notices the cornucopia of emotion going on on Demyx’s face - a mixture of confusion, hurt, amusement, and pure love. He furrows his brow and asks, “Are you okay, dude?”</p><p>“I think you kind of broke him,” Roxas remarks smartly. At that moment, Demyx seems to snap out of it and comes to smacking Roxas on the arm with the body of his ukulele. </p><p>“Shut up and eat your lunch before it gets cold,” he says.</p><p>So they eat. As expected, Roxas picks from off of Axel’s plate and Axel, truthfully never much of a huge eater (not like Demyx, who will devour anything), doesn’t mind altogether too much. When the homeowners come out and greet them, they are as Roxas expects them to be - fire and ice, the woman a pale lithe thing who barely speaks more than three or four words at a time and the man a boisterous, almost yelling ape of a person. While Axel sweet talks them, Roxas and Demyx start hauling boxes and furniture into the house, following the wife’s curt directions as to where to place everything. </p><p>It’s a nice house. Spacious living room, with huge windows that trigger Roxas like nothing else. Lingering in the space longer than he should, he hovers close to the windows without seeming conspicuous, wanting more than anything to just check each pane for security, for aperture. It is almost like an itch he needs to scratch but cannot for fear of looking absolutely psycho. </p><p>Coming into the house with a floor lamp, Axel gives him a scrutinizing look. “You okay, dude? Not going crazy today, are you?”</p><p>“Trying not to,” Roxas replies through gritted teeth, moving swiftly outside and to the hidden side of the moving truck, where he doubles over and vomits half-digested barbecue beef and potato salad into the pristine bushes. Demyx spies him, looking concerned.</p><p>“Uh, dude, are you vomiting?” Demyx asks around a handful of boxes.</p><p>“Yeah, fuck, don’t tell Axel!” Roxas yells back. Two minutes later, Axel’s hand is on the back of his neck and he’s saying something really soothing and stupid that Roxas doesn’t totally hear - he’s just lost in the gentle pressure of Axel’s hand, the nonsense sound of his voice.</p><p>Roxas believes he’s cursed. Ever since his mother died and him, his dad, and Sora moved to the Pacific Northwest, bad things have been happening on a nearly daily basis. Sometimes, most of the time, it’s entirely mundane - the milk is spoiled or the car runs out of gas in the middle of the commute to work or school or he gets a failing grade on a project or he loses cell service in the middle of a really important call. Other times, though, the curse reveals itself in more devastating ways - sending Sora lurching into a coma in the wake of a horror movie car accident, killing Dad off in a heart attack mid-shower catastrophe, diagnosing Roxas with obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder, etc, and so on and so forth. Today, the curse gave him shaking hands and a weak stomach. Tomorrow, we will see how things go.</p><p>Tonight, he dreams of Axel’s hands disembodied from their owner. He dreams of hunting them down in a dark forest, shooting them with bow and arrow and bringing them home in a sack. He dreams of skinning them and braising and browning them on the stovetop, then eating them bones and all. Axel has hands like a pianist with many calluses from years of working hard and playing guitar. His hands taste good in Roxas’ dream, and when he wakes in the morning, he goes and vomits for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.</p><p>It’s time to visit Sora. Sora is thirteen minutes older than him, the elder twin in actuality if not in spirit. Most people used to guess when meeting them for the first time that Roxas was a year or two older than Sora as owing to his more intensely somber spirit and greater sense of personal responsibility, because Sora has always been the child between them, even after they stopped really being children altogether. Roxas deeply misses Sora’s infantile nature, his many days spent wandering around town back home in Wailuku, the way he’d get lost just ambling down the beach or to the pool house. He misses Sora’s sunburnt complexion and hair, his dark blue eyes, which he never sees anymore.</p><p>Today, Sora’s eyes are taped shut with masking tape and there’s a tube sticking out of his mouth. Roxas aches to rip the tape off and peel Sora’s eyelids back just to take a look at his irises once again, but he knows this would be terribly inappropriate, so instead he sits by the bedside and sketches everything he sees in his sketchbook. He draws Sora’s chapped lips, fixed in a pout around the tube that drains down his esophagus. He draws the shitty, plastic-looking curtains and the scene outside of the hospital room window, the Portland sky and the subroof of some other hospital building. He draws Sora’s IV bag, struggling to depict the liquid medicine and nutrients within it. He draws Sora’s mess of brown hair, almost spiky with disarray, and wonders when’s the last time someone ran a brush through it, not that Sora ever combed his hair much before he was in a coma. </p><p>“Terra turned to the dark side,” Roxas tells Sora as he draws, filling him in with the plot of The Book. “He’s been falling for awhile, but he finally took the plunge because his Dark Master got in his head, you know. Dad used to get in our heads like that, you remember. He was such an intense dude, always thinking and always plotting something. I guess that’s how he got so rich, building parks and planning cities the way he did. I miss him.” Roxas looks at Sora, his mouth ajar and the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. “I miss you.”</p><p>Sora says nothing. Roxas didn’t expect much different, but he still hopes and prays for the day when Sora will suddenly open his eyes, rip the tube out of his mouth, and yell, “Sike!” like he used to when he’d play dead or otherwise asleep all those years ago.</p><p>Roxas turns in his Sora studies for his life drawing class that he takes on Wednesdays. He also turns in sketches of kids he sees at the skate park and at The Shop, fatties with acne and high schoolers with highlighter-colored casts on, high schoolers in wheelchairs, high schoolers with braces. His teacher, a youngish lady named Aerith who wears her hair in a long brown braid down her back, says she likes his eye but wants him to diversify his subject matter, so instead of getting at least a B, he gets a C, which makes him want to quit everything. He goes home and checks all the doors, windows, jars, and lightbulbs, then eats cookies and cream ice cream right out of the big plastic tub because he’s feeling self-loathing.</p><p>“How has response prevention been working lately?” his headshrinker, Dr. DiZ, asks him on Thursday. Steepling his long, pale hands over his desk, he gives Roxas a probing, piercing look. “Have you been able to expose yourself to the urge to check, to appropriate triggers, without giving in?”</p><p>Roxas fiddles with the rings on his fingers. He’s always wanted to draw Dr. DiZ, who has such a severe old man face, but he knows it would hardly be proper to pull out his sketchbook during his appointment unless DiZ wanted to see some of his work for some reason. He doesn’t want to answer this question, knowing what the response will be, but sees no other choice but to tell his psychiatrist the truth. “Things have been really bad lately,” he says. “I’ve been checking every day no matter what kind of mood I’m in. I even had an incident last week where I wanted to check a stranger’s house, and I had to go leave and vomit in the bushes.”</p><p>DiZ’s responding frown is grim. “You haven’t been managing your anxiety well?”</p><p>“No,” Roxas replies, feeling like an asshole. “Not at all.”</p><p>“Maybe the Prozac alone isn’t doing it.” DiZ turns to his desktop computer and starts to type a bunch of stuff. “Maybe I should start you on an anxiolytic for you to take as needed as your anxiety spikes and you feel the compulsion to check.”</p><p>Roxas considers his curse, the way it will curve and bend around everything to ruin his life, even drugs. He says, “We can give that a try.”</p><p>Dr. DiZ writes him a prescription for Xanax and sends him on his way. Roxas skates to the drugstore a block down from his house and waits an hour to get it filled. He dawdles around the store, down each aisle, perusing hair dye and feminine sanitary products and OTC painkillers and back pillows until his crazy person anxiety pills are ready and he can roll on home. As soon as he’s in the door, he takes two bars of Xanax and sits down on his sofa and completely zones out, dead to the world, destination unknown.</p><p>Roxas finds that going to the grocery store zonked out on Xanax is among one of the most pleasurable things he in his cursed state is able to participate in. Filling up on buttery Ritz crackers and sea salt ice cream bars and Greek yogurt with strawberry chunks in it and the makings of a killer peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich when he literally has nothing going through his mind, is literally on simple autopilot through the thick foggy sky of a Xanax Friday - it’s bliss. Pure and simple. He spends all of his money on sandwich fixings and junk food and comes home and piles all of it, bread too, into the refrigerator and freezer. Then he plays video games for the next three hours, his eyes glazed over and bloodshot, his head heavy, heavy, heavy.</p><p>At least he’s not checking everything in sight.</p><p>Once a week, The Shop hosts a Dungeons and Dragons/cosplay night. Roxas figures this is one way for The Shop to stay relevant with people in his desired age cohort, but it wasn’t his idea - it was Naminé’s, seeing as she has a friend who likes to come in and play on Fridays. This friend is named Xion, and she is the most beautiful person Roxas has ever seen.</p><p>Xion is a Samoan chick. As a Native Hawaiian himself, Roxas feels connected to Xion on the basis of their shared place on the same cultural-linguistic tree. He knows she’s Samoan because she told him one day when she came in for DnD and he asked, albeit awkwardly, about the tribal tattoos on her forearm and shoulder. </p><p>“Oh, yeah. I got these for my dad, ‘cause I’m Samoan,” Xion said to him before the game started two Fridays ago, her holding out her pretty brown arm for Roxas to admire. “Usually only men get them, and they get them tattooed below the waist down to their knees, but I said, ‘Daddy, I’m gonna honor you the only way I know how to.’”</p><p>She was the realest thing Roxas had ever encountered. </p><p>“Why don’t I ever see you around Oblivion?” Roxas asked on that strange Friday, wanting to grasp her head in his hands and twist it off her neck, to run home with her head and keep it in his bedroom and talk to it at night. She was like a doll - a perfect, tawny doll with a shock of jet hair atop her pretty little head - and Roxas was shocked at how much he liked her, not knowing her all that much.</p><p>“Probably because I’m a complete hermit,” Xion admitted, sounding bashful and looking so cute when she was shy. “I mostly just sit around at home watching pimple-popping videos and drinking Mountain Dew. Here - do you want to see the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life? It’s so great, you’ve got to see it-” </p><p>And then they were standing around Xion’s smartphone, watching some YouTube physician drain a cyst on the back of someone’s neck. Roxas hated the grossness of it all, but he loved that Xion was a person who watched pimple-popping videos, loved that she was comfortable enough to tell him that she watched pimple-popping videos.</p><p>“Do you smoke?” Xion asked him, smiling timidly.</p><p>“Of course,” Roxas replied, trying to sound as cool as possible. The truth was, he didn’t smoke weed nearly as much as the reader might think, him being close friends with a drug dealer and a pothead, but he wanted Xion to like him so bad, so he acted professional about his smoking habit. </p><p>“Cool.” Xion’s smile broadened a little bit, and Roxas felt himself go weak in the knees for her, her strange island beauty and her big brown eyes. “I personally am the biggest stoner on this side of the country, so if you ever want to hang out and self-medicate, you know, maybe you should hit me up.”</p><p>“Really?” Roxas felt his heart soar into the upstairs corner of his body. “That would be amazing.”</p><p>Xion looked like she was going to say something else, but then she was being called away by her Dungeon Master - Xemnas, a silver-haired guy with a severe stare poorly concealed behind thin glasses. In the commotion of the DnD session and everything that came afterward, she neglected to give Roxas her phone number, and Roxas sat in bed every night for a week missing her, wondering how to get in touch with Xion - the Samoan chick with a man’s tattoo. </p><p>The following Friday, she came back in a Misfits T-shirt and riding a longboard. Roxas wondered how he was going to deal with the enormity of his crush, how embarrassing it was, how it literally crushed him beneath its herculean weight.</p><p>“You skate?” he asked her, standing outside The Shop with a lit cigarette in his hand, him trying to look like a person that was interesting and sophisticated and didn’t obsessively check every window, door, jar, and lightbulb for aperture at any given opportunity.</p><p>“Yeah, of course,” Xion said casually, holding her longboard in one hand as she approached the door of The Shop. “Why, do you?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m all over Oblivion all the time on my board.” Roxas found her so curious, so odd, almost out of place in such a spot as this town. “I can’t believe I never see you.”</p><p>“Maybe it’s not meant to be,” Xion pronounced, sending Roxas’ stomach plummeting into the floor of his pelvis. She stood close to Roxas then, and conspiratorially, she leaned in and whispered, “I think I’m cursed.”</p><p>Roxas’ eyes blew out to the size of saucers. “Cursed?”</p><p>Xion nodded gravely. Holy shit, he was going to marry her. </p><p>“I think I’m cursed, too,” he confided in her, his new friend. Taking a short drag off of his cigarette, he looked into her face for any traces of dishonesty or tension. Finding none, he said, “Maybe that’s why you’ve eluded me for so long.”</p><p>“You were looking for me?” Xion asked, her expression ambiguous.</p><p>Roxas simply nodded. He was not good at this - this flirting thing - but thankfully, Xion didn’t seem to mind. Instead, she smiled big and asked him to give her his hand, on which she wrote her number with a Sharpie retrieved from her pocket.</p><p>Being, as he is, a limp dick whiny bitch, Roxas didn’t call Xion this week. He was too busy running around with Axel and medicating with Xanax. It’s Friday, though, which means that The Shop is hosting the Dungeons and Dragons group for their weekly get-together. Today is a special Friday - the Oblivion Nobodies have opened their Dungeons and Dragons session to the general public and have furnished the shop with refreshments (some alcoholic) for a party following the completion of the session. </p><p>Roxas knows he will see Xion tonight. He decides to bring Axel as his wingman, promising that there will be some other hot DnD chick or dude with blue hair to hit on by the evening’s close.</p><p>“Okay, so what’s this girl’s name again?” Axel asks from the driver’s seat of the van as they drive to The Shop.</p><p>“Xion,” Roxas pronounces, each syllable pillowed lovingly on his tongue. “You’ll see when you meet her. She’s like the most amazing thing ever.”</p><p>“Does she have nice tits?” Axel asks with a snort, driving one-handed and smoking a cigarette with the other hand. He ashes his cig out of the open window. “Does she have a fat ass? Is she thick?”</p><p>“Dude, why would I tell you that? So you can steal her?”</p><p>“Of course, man,” Axel replies smoothly, smirking around his cigarette butt. “You know Axel gets all the honeys.”</p><p>“Oh my God, I hate you,” Roxas says, putting his face in his hands to evince the nature of his mortification. “You’re my best friend and I fucking hate you.”</p><p>The Shop is busier than normal when they arrive. Young adult knights, warlocks, and sorceresses in their age range congregate in the middle of the floor, drinking spiked punch and munching on Doritos from the refreshment table. Axel looks immeasurably angry at having been dragged to a nerd convention, but Roxas gives him an apologetic look and says, “Things will get better when you start to mingle. You’ll see.”</p><p>Axel rolls his eyes. “There better be my hottie with the blue hair here. Bonus points if they have a nose ring.”</p><p>At that moment, Roxas spies Xion across the room. A song plays in his head, something slow, percussive, and bass-heavy, threaded through with the honey melodies of a good Pendergrass record. She is dressed in brilliant silks - a kimono-like robe draped over her stacked form, cinched in the middle by a great silver obi and open around her bosom so her breasts spill out a little. There are brilliant birds of paradise feathers in her jet hair, and she is wearing war paint on her face, red and yellow and white in bright streaks across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Roxas gets Axel’s attention by nudging him a little with his elbow; he sort of gestures vaguely to Xion and says, “There she is.”</p><p>Axel looks at who he indicates and emits a low, appreciative whistle. “Zoo-wee mama,” he says in a flirty undertone. “She’s a looker. You know how to pick ‘em, eh, Roxas?”</p><p>“I’m going to go talk to her,” Roxas says, then is immediately overtaken by shame. “Oh, shit, how do I look? Why the fuck didn’t I take a Xanax before I came here?”</p><p>“Because then you wouldn’t have remembered anything and you probably would have made a total ass out of yourself,” Axel replies. Gripping Roxas’ arm gently, he leads him forward through the room in Xion’s direction, saying, “Come on, dude, there’s not much to it.”</p><p>“Oh my God, Axel, no!” Roxas pushes against Axel’s urging and finds his friend’s strength herculean. “What if I look like a douchebag? What if?!”</p><p>And then they are in front of Xion, looking at her beautiful everything - her silver necklaces and bracelets, her war paint, the big ass sword on her back. Xion smiles at them with her whole face, looking between Roxas and Axel with a sort of confused but friendly look about her.</p><p>“Hi!” Roxas says, trying to be as normal and okay as he so horrifically is not. “I was hoping I’d see you.”</p><p>“Hey, Roxas,” Xion replies, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear - is she nervous? “I thought I was going to hear from you this week and then I guess you bailed, so I was a little anxious about seeing you tonight. I knew you’d be here - you own the shop and all - I just thought, you know, maybe-”</p><p>“I am so sorry,” Roxas interjects, knowing that Xion has to be in utter agony the longer she goes on. When her expression turns relieved, he knows he guessed right. “I’ve just been having kind of a messy week, which means I’ve been completely avoiding my phone and all social contact.”</p><p>“Damn, Roxas, you really know how to make a girl feel special,” Axel says from behind him, sinking a cold stone of mortification in his gut. Smirking, Axel reaches around Roxas to give Xion his hand to shake, saying, “Hi, I’m Axel. I’m angelface here’s best friend, not that he was planning on introducing me or anything like that.”</p><p>“Axel, come on,” Roxas whines.</p><p>“You must be Xion,” Axel says in his smooth and suave way, the way he knows how to charm just about anything with a pulse. He holds her hand in his and squeezes a little. “I’ve heard so much about you, really, it’s almost like you’re a celebrity.”</p><p>“Am I one of those celebrities you love to hate or one that you hate to love?” Xion asks, smiling her cutest smile yet. </p><p>“Hate to love, of course,” Axel replies, winking at her. “All hail Xion, the baddest bitch there ever was.”</p><p>Xion laughs, and she snorts when she laughs, and there could not be anything more adorable than that. Of course Axel would choose to flirt with Roxas’ crush, and of course she would like it, and here is Roxas, wanting more than anything to go home and cry into his ice cream until it’s bedtime.</p><p>“What are you dressed as?” Roxas blurts out, scrambling for an opportunity to look cool and talk again. Xion, who is gorgeous, spreads her arms and shows off the voluminous sleeves of her kimono; she unsheathes the blade strapped to her back and flourishes it in a dangerous arc. She’s perfect.</p><p>“I’m my DnD character, Xenia,” she says with a grin, sheathing her claymore once more. “She’s a chaotic good paladin. I would have put on the elf ears, but my glue wasn’t working with me today and they don’t really match my skintone.”</p><p>Axel scoffs. “White people.” Him being fairly swarthy himself, he leans in and says in an overly chummy mock-whisper, “We’re better off without them, am I right? We shall overcome?”</p><p>“Axel, you’re insane,” Roxas says, expecting Xion to back him up, but instead, she’s laughing her adorable, oinky laugh and leaning into Axel’s space, Axel simply smiling back at her, flawless and lovely. He feels as though he might throw up and die of embarrassment at any moment. He feels, again, as though he wants to go home.</p><p>Nervously fingering the strap of his messenger bag, Roxas goes into his signature gambit - the one he used on Naminé when she first started working at The Shop, before everything descended into awkwardness and stilted conversation between them. “Can I draw you?” he asks, his fingers already itching for his pencil. “I’m taking this life drawing class so it’s kind of my thing to immortalize people, you know. My teacher says I need to diversify my subject matter, and you’re as far from pimply teenagers as a person can get, so.”</p><p>Xion laughs again, spellbinding and horrific. She brandishes her big ass sword. “Should I pose for you?”</p><p>Roxas cannot stay his smile as he pulls out his sketchbook and pencil. “Sure.”</p><p>Xion screws up her face in thought for a moment, then strikes a pose befitting her Dungeons character. She points her blade straight down to the ground and crosses her wrists atop its hilt, adopting a serene expression behind her layer of war paint. Roxas glances at Axel, who simply watches Xion with a look of vague appreciation on his face, as if he is observing a fine piece of art instead of a person. He puts his pencil to paper and tries hard to capture the look of determination behind her brown eyes, the folds of her kimono around her supple form, the shine of her blade in the light.</p><p>He shows her his drawing after he’s done.</p><p>“Oh my God!” Xion cries, gushing over this idealized depiction of her, at shading and cross-hatching and the harsh lines of the paint on her face. She grins at Roxas with her whole face. “You can really draw. Like, really <em> really </em> draw. Why aren’t you selling your art?”</p><p>“I’m trying to,” Roxas says, not wanting to go into the whole tragic story of his fair-to-middling career in the comic book industry but feeling compelled to regardless. “I’m working on a book right now and it’s like, kind of successful?”</p><p>“With thirteen year olds,” Axel puts in from his side, reminding everyone that he exists.</p><p>“Which is great, I guess, but my target demographic is more people our age, you know.” Roxas shrugs and tries not to devolve into sudden and horrendous tears. “Things are going okay for me.”</p><p>“Yeah, right,” Axel says under his breath, ensuring both Roxas and Xion hear him. When they turn to the older man in unison, his facade is casual, friendly, like he totally isn’t being the hugest dick ever right now.</p><p>“What are you talking about?” Xion asks with a nervous laugh, putting her sword back in its sheath.</p><p>“Holy shit, Roxas, you really didn’t tell her anything about your life?” Axel asks, giving Roxas a faintly accusatory look. “Your OCD, your dad? The Book? Not even about Sora?” He makes a sound like <em> pshhh </em>. “Yikes, dude. It’s like you don’t even really like her.”</p><p>“Of course I like her!” Roxas blurts out before he can help himself, his face flushed with shame. Xion is looking at him like he’s the most precious and pathetic thing in the world and he can’t stand that, can’t bear the immensity of his mortification, would run directly out of The Shop into the night and disappear forever if it wasn’t the most immature thing to do possible. He shows his red face to Xion and says, “I’m sorry. I have a crush on you and my best friend is an asshole and I just want to look cool but obviously that’s against the law.” He jabs an elbow into Axel’s ribs and feels the utmost pleasure at the groan of pain this act produces. “Right, Axel?”</p><p>“Right,” Axel replies with strain. “Just trying to be your worst wingman ever.”</p><p>Xion, bless her heart, is still smiling at the two of them. Roxas imagines some distant and beautiful future where they could all be friends, and Xion could be his perfect girlfriend who cuddles him in bed in the still of the night, and drinks beers with him while he plays games on Xbox Live, and isn’t afraid to burp or fart or pick her nose in front of him, and their kisses are so good, and Axel is somehow there in the middle of all that too. “It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to be cool. I still like you.”</p><p>There is hope for Roxas yet. He feels his heart fluttering somewhere high up inside him.</p><p>Of course, then Axel says, “Woohoo. Let’s just hope this doesn’t turn into another Naminé.”</p><p>Xion, who is Naminé’s friend and through whom she knows Roxas, turns inquisitive. “What happened with Naminé?”</p><p>Thankfully, at that moment, Xemnas stands in the middle of the room and starts talking at a volume meant to be heard by everyone present.</p><p>“Everyone, thank you very much for coming.” His voice is a deep, booming thing that reverberates throughout the room like a thunderclap, almost otherworldly in this way. Roxas finds himself suddenly very much afraid listening to this voice, though he doesn’t know why. “The Oblivion Nobodies are proud to host our session for the public this week. As some of you may know, this is our third session for this campaign, so things should not be altogether too hard to pick up on.” Clapping his hands together, he searches the room for the members of the Dungeons and Dragons group. “Nobodies, if you’ll meet me in the back room for a private pre-session warm-up.”</p><p>Xion smiles at Roxas and Axel, saying, “See you guys after the sesh,” and tagging them both on the arm before disappearing into the back with the rest of the Nobodies, all of them dressed in the garments of warriors. Roxas gives Axel a hard, stone cold look as soon as her back is turned; Axel doesn’t quite see it until he’s through watching Xion walk oh so prettily away.</p><p>“What?” Axel asks.</p><p>“You really fucked me up back there, Axel,” Roxas says, punching his friend hard but not too hard in the arm. “Thanks for supporting me.”</p><p>“Hey, I just think you should be honest with a girl you like,” Axel retorts without heat, grabbing Roxas’ hand and leading him towards the refreshment table to get some vodka-spiked punch - the nerd’s alternative to jungle juice. “You remember Naminé. You remember how you tried to act like your shit didn’t stink and you ended up totally making a fool out of yourself.”</p><p>“No, man, I just couldn’t maintain the facade of being a badass and everything got all weird,” Roxas says, taking the cup Axel offers to him without really thinking about it. </p><p>“Exactly, which is why you shouldn’t try to act like a badass in the first place.” Axel pops a Dorito into his mouth and eyes the spread of Oreos curiously. “Just be yourself. Tell the girl you have OCD and weird dreams at night, and you’re semi-permanently separated from the one person that’s been with you since the day of your birth, and you’re disappointed in your career but you’re still making it work, and bam! She’ll fall in love with you in no time.”</p><p>“If only,” Roxas says in a dreamy way, staring at the closed door of the back room and wondering what in the world is going on beyond it.</p><p>The Oblivion Nobodies stay sequestered for their private warm-up for fifteen going on twenty minutes, and all the while Roxas avoids the eyes of everyone present while Axel thinks aloud about his plans to chat certain lookers in the crowd up. At the ice queen blondie with slicked back hair, Axel whistles, saying, “Ooh, she’s a hottie. I bet she’s kind of crazy, though, she has that look.” At the pink-haired man wearing a floral button-down and rosy lipstick: “Aw, <em> man </em>, that guy is insanely sexy. He’s freaking crazy, too, look!” Axel grips Roxas’ arm to get his attention and points unabashedly at Pink Hair and Blondie, who are suddenly congregating together in one corner of The Shop. “They’re obviously friends. Crazies stick together, am I right?”</p><p>Roxas gives Axel an exasperated look. “<em> We’re </em> crazies, Axel.”</p><p>“Which is why I’m totally gonna smush with one of them,” Axel declares triumphantly, stuffing an Oreo into his mouth. “I think I like the blonde better, even though she looks mean. Maybe I should go talk to her.”</p><p>“Go ahead,” Roxas says kind of distractedly, sipping hard and long from his punch in what perhaps might count as an attempt to get prematurely very drunk.</p><p>Axel cuts his eyes at him. “What are you moping about? Xion likes you, dude! You’ve practically got the chick bagged! You’re probably gonna go home and hook up with her tonight! I’ll totally drive you kids home and give you some herb and then you can get busy-”</p><p>“Stop talking about her like that,” Roxas interjects, wanting suddenly very much to hit Axel in the face. “She’s not just a piece of ass.”</p><p>“You were talking about her like she was some precious object,” Axel retorts smartly, and well, he’s not wrong about that. “I know how you feel about her. You want her to be your cool, weird girlfriend who makes you feel good about yourself. That’s all she is to you.”</p><p>“Oh my God, shut up!” Roxas cries, loud enough to draw the stares of a few curious bystanders. “She’s more than that, she’s… she’s who she is.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Axel looks unimpressed. “You haven’t even hung out with her alone. You haven’t shared a meal with her. She hasn’t told you a secret yet.”</p><p>As always, Axel is right, and Roxas must simply be in awe of his rightness. The Oblivion Nobodies come out of the back room, and The Shop is suddenly quiet as they all sit around the table in the center of the room, ready to start their session.</p><p>Roxas sketches studies of each member of the campaign. Xion especially, her expressions of deep contemplation and utter joy as Xenia undergoes the trials of a disgraced second-rate paladin trying to find her way in the world. Xemnas, his dark and severe face and his simple costume as Dungeon Master of a black hooded cloak. The man playing the character in charge of the party - a blue-haired beauty named Saïx, striking in profile and majestic in voice - is dressed as a half-orc berserker, his clothes lined with fur and his jewelry brassy. There is a man in his mid-twenties who looks no older than sixteen, wearing his hair in his face and the apparel of a Tiefling rogue - Roxas never learns his name, but he does a few studies of his youthful, mysterious face. Another man quite literally the former’s opposite plays a half-orc fighter that is the brother of Saïx’s character; strong, burly, and big, his name is Lexaeus and Roxas sketches him exactly one time. Finally, Roxas does a study of the man playing a human cleric - long-faced with a strong nose and stringy blond hair, Vexen wields a shield with a triskelion on it, which he proudly brandishes for all the onlookers to see. </p><p>It occurs to him, as he captures Xion’s likeness for the fifth time, that Xion is the only girl in this group of older men, and he vaguely wonders both what the nature of Xion’s relationships with each of them are and how they all ended up being friends, or at the very least Dungeons and Dragons partners.</p><p>Afterward, he and Axel drink a cup of punch each and disperse to separate corners of the shop - Axel to chat up blondie and Pink Hair, Roxas to sit and talk with Xion behind the cash register, where no one disturbs them. Somebody is playing music from some speaker somewhere, Garland Jeffies’ drawling melodies and weird French psychedelic punk; Roxas doesn’t mind as Xion dances a little to the tunes, bopping back and forth to the rhythm, her expression blissed out in the wake of a good session and too many cups of punch. Eventually she starts hiccupping, and she buries her face in Roxas’ chest when she does this, so mortified and so drunk.</p><p>“I’m so sorry, Roxas,” she mumbles into his shirt, her hands fisted around the breathable cotton-blend fabric. “I’m being really embarrassing.”</p><p>“No,” Roxas replies, putting his hand in Xion’s shock of black black hair. “You’re actually being really cute right now.”</p><p>Xion looks into his face. Their noses are mere inches apart. “What are you thinking?” she asks, looking so very scared and so very happy. In the background, the music tramples on, steady rhythm, French questions: <em> Tu as peur de regretter est-ce que ça valait le coup? Tu te poses des questions, n'écoute que la musique! </em></p><p>Roxas looks back into Xion. He wants to know her so bad, he wants Axel to be wrong more than anything in his life. “I’m thinking I want to kiss you.”</p><p>Xion lets out a loud, obnoxious laugh, then smashes her mouth into Roxas’, the kiss sloppy and open-mouthed. Roxas is instantly a puddle, instantly nothing but red mash and goop in a skin suit the color of a roasted cashew. He holds Xion’s hands in his and kisses her mouth, her chin, her cheeks covered with war paint, even the delicate brown shell of her ear. She giggles, whispering in his ear, “You’re so cute. I like you, Roxas. I like you a lot.” </p><p>He wants to go home with her right fucking now, to show her all around his nice house and maybe lie with her in his big lonely bed - but then all of a sudden, in the middle of this great fucking kiss (or is it kisses? Roxas can’t tell at this point), Axel is showing up with a really fucking upset look on his face, saying, “Roxas.”</p><p>Roxas pulls out of the liplock and his heart breaks in two. He looks at Axel with a sort of outrageously upset expression, asks, “What?”</p><p>“Someone stole my fucking van,” Axel says. “I was gonna ditch your ass and go home with blondie, but then we went outside and my fucking van was <em> gone </em>, so now I look like an asshole and we have no way to get home.”</p><p>Roxas looks at Xion, who looks back at him with a bashful, apologetic expression. She kisses his cheek, then gets up from where she’s been sitting and says, “I’ll let you guys deal with this. Call me tomorrow, maybe I’ll help you find your van?”</p><p>Roxas thinks he’s going to spontaneously die. “Thanks, Xion,” he says, then watches her walk away with a stone sinking hard and fast in his gut, threatening to rip his body in two.</p><p>He and Axel walk all around the neighborhood looking for the van, asking passersby if they’ve seen any vehicles matching its description. They call Demyx and ask him to look out around town for any other white 2008 Ford Transits, then head to Roxas’ house because there really is no other place to go or thing to do without a vehicle. They are embarrassed and shamed as they walk the Oblivion streets, hands in their pockets, nothing on them but what they brought into The Shop with them.</p><p>“Fuck, I had a fucking mahogany end table and like three pounds of weed in that fucking van, man, <em> fuck! </em>” Axel cries into the oubliette of the night, his delicate features twisted into an expression of pure scorn. Roxas briefly reaches out and holds Axel’s hand, squeezing it for comfort, and he doesn’t let go until Axel squeezes back. They walk on.</p><p>When they get to the Craftsman, an eerie feel has overtaken the house and it is all dark and creaking, the sound of the structure’s many years strange to the ears. Roxas immediately makes a beeline for the bathroom to find his Xanax and swallow a bar so that he doesn’t immediately descend into checking everything in sight. He goes into his bedroom and empties the contents of his jacket pockets onto his nightstand - his smartphone, his keys, a small package of chewing gum (which stood him in good stead during his makeout session earlier), and a nondescript car key he’s never seen before in his life. He figures it’s just one of the van’s extra keys and leaves the room, going to check on Axel where he’s rampaging through his kitchen like a madman.</p><p>“Hey, Axel…” Roxas says as he enters the room, feeling the first few soothing touches of Xanax in his consciousness, everything just a little fuzzier, a little warmer.</p><p>Axel is standing in front of the refrigerator, pulling out his sandwich fixings and a can of Barq’s. He looks up at Roxas, and where his expression is initially full of irritation (probably at the way the night has turned so fantastically bad), it turns soft and affectionate as soon as his eyes fall upon his younger friend. “Hey, angelface,” comes his easy reply.</p><p>“I’m really sorry about the van.” Roxas nervously scratches his arm, leaning against the closed refrigerator door. “I know if you hadn’t been with my dumb ass tonight all of this wouldn’t have happened.”</p><p>“Dude, chill out. You made out with the cutest girl in Oblivion and I got the digits of not one, but <em> two </em> DnD hotties.” Axel affords Roxas a sweet smile as he slaps together a salami, cheddar, pickle, and mayonnaise sandwich on white bread. He cracks open his can of root beer and takes a long, indulgent sip. “Plus there was that dude with the blue hair - <em> Saïx </em>, now I could fucks with that guy if only he lightened up a little.”</p><p>Roxas laughs, suddenly incredibly relieved that Axel is able to make light of such a horrible situation. “Do you want to like, call the police or-?”</p><p>“Hell no, Roxas,” Axel answers before he can even get the question fully out of his mouth. “The weed, remember? I’m kind of a shady dude?”</p><p>Roxas feels extraordinarily dumb. “Of course.”</p><p>Turning away from the counter and stuffing his sandwich into his mouth - taking one healthy, scrumptious bite - Axel regards Roxas for a long moment, watching him sag and droop against the refrigerator. As soon as his mouth is vacated of food, he gives Roxas a sympathetic look and says, “Go to bed, angelface. I’ll just camp out on your couch and we’ll figure all of this out tomorrow, okay? I know where the blankets are.”</p><p>With a gale-force sigh, Roxas acknowledges that he should do exactly what Axel says (as usual, this the most comical and longstanding fact of their relationship). He resists the urge to give Axel a hug, instead salutes him with two fingers and says, “Night, partner,” then makes his way back to his bedroom and falls into a black void of sleep.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. ACT TWO</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h1>
  <em>
    <span>ACT TWO</span>
  </em>
</h1><p> </p><p>
  <span>Axel wakes to a stripe of sunlight painting itself across his forehead, bright enough to rouse him from six hours of restless sleep that is fuzzy with alcohol consumption. He looses a deep, horrendous groan from his throat, his eyes prickly with sand and his tongue a dry, foreign animal in his mouth. It occurs to him that he’s hungover (that last cup of punch was probably a mistake), and in order to alleviate this condition he needs to get some hydration in him immediately. Axel makes another noise of abject pain and makes himself vertical, stumbling his way into Roxas’ kitchen with the blind ease he’d stumble into his own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He finds the orange juice. Drinks about a full eight ounces in a single gulp, letting the sweet acidic nectar burn down his throat and coat his esophagus. He finds potato chips as a chaser, dill pickle-flavored and perfectly tangy. The house is still around him, but there’s an uncomfortable feeling permeating it this morning, something he can’t quite put his finger on. He figures maybe he’ll take a walk to orient himself, then he’ll come back and call Demyx, wake Roxas up, get his whole day started.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As soon as Axel begins to approach the front door, his stomach is in knots. For some reason his steps come slower and slower the closer he gets to the threshold, as if he is walking through quicksand to an oasis on the other side of the door. Strangely, he begins to grab at the furniture to anchor him as he nears the door - the sofa, the end table, even the little armoire next to the door, where Roxas keeps his mail and such. Then his hand is on the knob, and he feels… not as though he’s been burnt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Axel was a pyro as a kid, okay. He liked playing with matches, lighters, fireworks, anything combustible. He was also a dumbass who burned his hand on a hot stove while horseplaying in the kitchen. The point is, he knows what it feels like to be burnt, and this feeling that accompanies touching the doorknob is not at all like being burnt. It is like being skinned alive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Holy fucking shit!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Axel screams, ripping his hand away from the knob and running as fast as he can to the opposite point in the room, where he feels the most safe. This morning has the makings of the weirdest one in recent memory; Axel is good with weirdness, but maybe not of this kind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He goes to wake Roxas. The blond is buried beneath his covers in his bed, dead to the world through the power of Xanax.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Roxas.” Axel gives his friend’s shoulder a vigorous shake through the covers. “Roxas, you need to wake up right now. I think you passed your curse onto me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas, sunk deep in an unclear dream about a rock sitting on his chest, wakes almost instantly at the sound of Axel’s voice. Blinking blearily into the world, he finds Axel with his eyes - his dreadlocks pulled back out of his face into a thick ponytail, his strange greenish eyes bloodshot and narrow - and it takes him a few moments to process what he’s said before he realizes that Axel is talking about his curse. Immediately, he is wide awake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re cursed?” Roxas sits up, staring Axel down. “What are you talking about?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just tried to go for a walk around the block,” Axel explains, looking ever more frantic with each word. “I couldn’t open the fucking door. It’s like everything inside me and the universe was telling me not to open that door, and when I touched it, I felt pure pain.” Axel releases a hysterical laugh into the air, pulling at his shock of red hair. “First the van, now this shit!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas swallows thickly. Waves of panic overtake him, drowning him in their deafening white swirl. “Hold on one second,” he says to Axel, getting out of bed and passing into the bathroom. He then proceeds to check every window, door, lightbulb, and jar in the house for the next thirty minutes - his fingers skimming along the edges of the glass panes and his hands jiggling the doorknobs (which cause him no pain to touch, by the way), him twisting the lightbulbs in their sockets, him opening and closing all the jars in the refrigerator.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the middle of his fifth sweep of the house, Axel comes to him and puts his hands on his face. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Stop it</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he says loudly into his face, pulling Roxas in for a hug and holding him tight to his chest. “You are going crazy and I’m gonna be crazy too unless you fucking cut it out and talk to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas breathes hard against Axel’s sternum. He is still wearing the same dark Henley from last night, and it smells of sleep, marijuana, and alcohol. “Okay,” he says, pulling away and leading Axel into his living room, where they sit on the bed Axel has made of the sofa. “Let’s talk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They verbally review their situation. They are both cursed - Roxas in a general sense, Axel not to leave the confines of this house apparently. The van is gone, never to be seen by any of the people they talked to last night. Demyx is on the lookout for it, but the police can’t get involved due to the nature of the van’s contents and Axel’s tenuous status as a Not Good Guy. As of right now, they have no leads and no information, and Roxas is about two bars of Xanax from a full-fledged panic attack.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe Xion knows something,” Axel chimes in in the middle of their conversation, pulling Roxas firmly out of the zone of real and true panic with the mere mention of his crush’s name. “She asked you to call her up, right? Do it, dude! Put some cologne on and do it!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, okay, let me get my phone,” Roxas says, already moving in the direction of his nightstand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The phone rings four times before Xion picks up. By the third ring, Roxas’ hope has sunk almost completely like a capsized boat in his chest, threatening to leave him drowning and deprived of oxygen. Then, her beautiful voice is coming, “Hello?” over the line, and Roxas can heave a sigh of relief.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Xion, hi!” Roxas is praying he doesn’t sound like a lunatic. “It’s not too early, is it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s only like eight, isn’t it?” Xion sounds sleepy, but perhaps this is to be expected after the late night they had making out and drinking punch last night. “I’m good. How are you this morning?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Crazy,” Roxas answers truthfully. Emotion swirls around inside him like a fierce tornado, the afterthought of last night’s excitement warring with the morning’s anxiety and desolation. “There’s kind of a lot going on over here right now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Like what?” Xion asks, and she sounds genuinely curious even in the hush and the fatigue of her voice. Roxas bites his lip as he considers the ramifications of opening up to her - will she think less of him? She did offer to help him yesterday, but what if she was just being nice? What if this whole romance is in his head?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Axel is cursed,” he hears himself say not entirely of his own volition. “I think something happened last night and I really need help. You’re the only person I can think of, and you’re the last person I saw last night before everything went wrong.” Roxas clears his throat against the sandpaper tickle in the back of it, feeling deeply silly. “That’s why I’m calling, I guess.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion is quiet for a moment, obviously mulling his words over. Roxas’ anxiety spikes to near unbearable levels during this still; he imagines a million scenarios in which they and this conversation could go wrong, and somehow none of the imagining compares in badness to the feeling of waiting for her to answer, waiting for her to reject him, waiting for his own curse to take effect.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally, she says, “I think I know some people that can help you.” Roxas wasn’t aware that he was holding his breath, but he’s finally able to exhale at this point. “I know a lot of people who were at the party last night who might know something. My group could also help you out with Axel’s curse, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Really?” Roxas scrambles for a pen and paper on his nightstand. “Can I come to you? Where’s your address?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, no, I’ll come to you,” Xion says, suddenly sounding much more awake than she had before. Her voice takes on a playful tone when she adds, “I’d rather check out your place, haha.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That reminds Roxas that he needs to clean up around here. He gives Xion his address, then spends the next fifteen minutes getting ready for her arrival - tidying up around the living room and bedroom, putting mousse in his dirty blond hair, brushing his teeth and washing the sleep gunk and oil from his face, changing into an outfit that properly evinces his readiness to work and friendliness as a person (i.e. his black and white hoodie and a pair of nice skinny jeans). All the while Axel sits around and calls people on his cell phone, trying to find the van, trying to do something useful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Xion arrives, she’s wearing holey blue jeans, a Joy Division T-shirt, and a bandana on her head. She comes riding her longboard, an angel with wings on her feet like a Greek god. She’s smiling big and bright when Roxas answers the door to her - “Hey!” she chirps, looking happy to see him again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” Roxas breathes in reply, not knowing if he should touch or hug her until all at once, she’s in his arms. He holds her to him with a fluttering in his gut, his face in her hair and their bellies communing through thick fabric. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion pulls away to beam at him again and pass into the house, her making a happy noise all the while. She sweeps her gaze around his living room, looking at his eclectic, 90s-inspired interior design - suede gray couches with plaid throw pillows, squat wooden coffee table filled with various knick knacks and drawing utensils. “I love your place,” she pronounces, twirling around in a small circle as she looks all around. “When did you move in here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A year ago,” Roxas replies without thinking, instead contemplating how nice Xion looks in his nice living room. “I got it after my dad died and left me an inheritance. Originally me and my brother were supposed to live here together, but then he slipped into a coma and I got the master bedroom.” He lets out a soft, bitter laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion gives him a sympathetic, somewhat curious look as he says this. Leaning her longboard against the wall (next to Roxas’ own skateboard, by the by), her voice is hushed with tenderness when she asks, “What happened to him?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He got in a car accident with his best friend. They weren’t drunk or anything, it was just a freak thing that happened.” Roxas studies the floor, feeling his chest go tight at the thought of the accident. “He’s my twin, so it’s been kind of hard to deal with my whole life course changing, you know. We were supposed to do so much together and now he just lives in a hospital bed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion frowns severely, looking like she wants to cry. “I’m so sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas shrugs. “It’s fine, really.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion adopts a bashful expression. “Would it be weird if I kissed you right now? I want to make you feel better.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instantly, Roxas does. He smiles a little. “No, you can kiss me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a small smile of her own, Xion leans in and presses her mouth to his. She tastes like her coconut lip gloss, tropical and sweet. Roxas kisses her back, trying not to lose himself in it and forget why she’s here in the first place. He wants to hang out with her all day, is thrilled with the possibility of having her at his side for the next eight hours or more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the moment when Xion is pulling away, Axel comes into the room from the back of the house, looking refreshed after washing his face and doing something about his teeth. He wears one of Roxas’ T-shirts, which is slightly too short on his long, lanky frame and thus cuts off just above his hip bones. He looks crabby, but his expression changes to one of wry amusement as soon as he sees Roxas and Xion necking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello, young lovers, wherever you are,” he intones, startling Xion a little bit if her little jump is anything to go on. Axel gives her a wave. “Hey, Xion. You’re looking lovely this morning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion grins, hiding her face behind her hands. “You’re too kind,” she says, then apparently gains some resolve as she looks at him head on and adds, “And apparently cursed!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Axel replies with a scowl as he is reminded of his predicament. “I can’t fucking leave the house and my van is gone. I’d say ‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>cursed</span>
  </em>
  <span>’ covers it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion moves to sit on the couch with her backpack, saying, “I might be able to help you.” She starts to pull a small notebook and ballpoint pen out of her bag. “The guys in my Dungeons and Dragons group are, wait for it, </span>
  <em>
    <span>librarians</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” She whispers this last word, giggling a little after she does it. “They might know something about how to fix or neutralize a curse. I just need you to tell me everything about it and I’ll write it down.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Axel describes the conditions of his curse to Xion while Roxas makes coffee in the kitchen. He makes Xion’s cup extra sugary when she asks, bringing her her mug of sweet hazelnut creme and Axel his own mug of straight black coffee within ten minutes of him starting the coffeemaker. The morning is bright now, the sun high in the sky and signalling to the world the full-stop start of the day. By this point, they’re sitting around in the living room trying to come up with a plan for the day, Xion making notes in her notebook all the while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, so we can talk to the Nobodies,” she says, jotting this out in shorthand. “Naminé might have seen something, too. The cosplaying kids are no-brainers.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, I got these people’s numbers last night,” Axel says, digging around in his jeans’ pocket for two crumpled slips of paper. “Marluxia and Larxene. They’re best friends or whatever. Maybe you could talk to them?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion takes the phone numbers from Axel’s offering hands and writes them down in her notebook as well. “We’ll meet with them too. They’re bound to have seen something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Watching his friends, Roxas feels a sense of enthusiasm and benign anticipation he hasn’t in what has felt like forever, him so ready to start this quest with Xion and actually do something productive for once. He sips his coffee and smiles at Axel and Xion, wanting more than anything to do right by both of them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After they finish coffee, he and Xion head out while Axel forces himself to kick back and watch Netflix for the next few hours, him waving them off with a mock-salute and promising to behave himself if they do the same. Being that they have no vehicle, Roxas and Xion are made to skate around Oblivion, which is no problem for them as they’re both practical experts at this point. Their first stop is The Shop to talk to Naminé; she’s always there at this time to open the place up. As they gear up to go, Xion gives Roxas a kiss on the tip of his nose and says, “Last one there is a rotten egg,” then speeds off in the direction of their destination without a second glance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck!” Roxas cries as he trails her as fast as he can. “You don’t play fair!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they get to The Shop, it’s empty save for the lady they’re seeking, which isn’t unusual for this hour on a Saturday. Naminé is doodling in her little notebook behind the counter, her blonde hair tucked behind her ears, her face a mask of concentration. Xion smiles as soon as she sees her friend.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Naminé!” she cries, then - when Naminé looks up and smiles in turn - goes to hug the tall, lithe girl. “Good morning!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Morning,” Naminé replies in her gentle, gossamer voice. Her eyes are tired, but she seems awake enough for eight-thirty. “What’s up? You and Roxas hang now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas suddenly remembers that he exists and abruptly feels a surge of self-consciousness. He inches in the direction of the big storefront window while Xion gestures to him and says, “Yeah, he’s kind of my boo thang. He’s cute, you know, and he draws well.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He does,” Naminé comments with a small, ambiguous smile. Roxas is brought back to his first meeting with her, when she started working at The Shop and he was embarrassingly smitten with her. Then he tried to act like the coolest, hardest motherfucker who ever existed, who was impervious to the troubles of his life and could sustain everything in the world - including a relationship. That fell apart spectacularly when it became apparent that he was, in reality, an obsessive-compulsive freak with no friends and an attitude problem. Roxas feels shame and wonders if he is blushing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look, girly-girl,” Xion says. She twirls a lock of Naminé’s wavy hair around her index finger, and Naminé giggles. “You know Axel, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course,” Naminé replies with a little roll of the eyes. “Everybody knows Axel, and he’s in here constantly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Someone stole his van last night.” When Naminé’s expression turns disheartened, Xion nods emphatically. “I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span>, right? That’s his van!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s Oblivion entire,” Roxas comments under his breath, checking the window.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were at the party-slash-session last night, so I was wondering if you saw or heard anything,” Xion says, crossing her arms over the counter next to the cash register. “Anything at all, even a whiff of something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Naminé’s face screws up in thought for a moment, her racking her brains for anything that could be helpful to them. The party was convivial and hectic after the session wrapped up, thanks to all the food and the drinks, so she could have spoken with and seen absolutely anybody in the crowd of nerds and costumed freaks. Roxas, for the first time, entertains the thought that in his love-drunk blindness, he could have failed to see the bad element his shop has attracted. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck fuck fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thinks. How could he have been such an idiot?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gee, Xion, I can’t think of anything,” Naminé says, nervously rubbing the back of her neck. “I really wasn’t mingling all that much. I was stuck talking to this really cute guy cosplaying as a dark knight - did you see him? He was prematurely gray, it was kind of funny.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh my God, no!” Xion hops up and down in a sort of victory dance. “Tell me about him! Tell me about his costume! Was it like a classic fantasy dark knight with the armor and the pauldrons and all that or did he go more modern?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas interprets this as his cue to tune them out. As infatuated as he is with Xion, it is utterly strange to listen to her and Naminé (his former crush, mind you) gush about a cute guy at a function which he didn’t even attend in-costume. Instead of listening to the girls, he takes a moment to update Axel via text message.</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <b>Today</b>
    <span> 8:42 AM</span>
  </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b>Roxas<br/></b>
    <span>Hey Naminé didn’t see anything [worried face emoji] I guess we’re supposed to hook up with those people you talked to last night now?</span>
  </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b>Axel<br/></b>
    <span>FUCK</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>okay</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>be careful with those people angelface, they were hot but like i was right. they are fucking LOCO dude [face with tears of joy emoji]</span>
  </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b>Roxas<br/></b>
    <span>Please define loco. Please tell me it doesn’t mean what I think it means.</span>
  </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b>Axel<br/></b>
    <span>idk man they were just kind of intense and we were talking about doing acid and having a threesome lowkey okay it was a VERY VERY R-RATED CONVERSATION</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>these people are professionals and they know some shit. they are of my ilk. you don’t want to trust people like me</span>
  </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b>Roxas<br/></b>
    <span>Of course I do. You’re the best person I know.</span>
  </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b>Axel<br/></b>
    <span>i’m so flattered [heart with arrow emoji]</span>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s at that point that Xion is suddenly in front of Roxas with her notebook, shoving her page full of notes in his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look!” she says, shaking the notebook around a little. “Naminé didn’t know anything, which is shitty, but we can still talk to these people! Do you want me to text them or should I?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas immediately thinks of what Axel just told him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Be careful with those people</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He doesn’t want Xion to have anything to do with them if he can help it, and he already has his phone in his hand, so he says, “No, I’ll text them. Hold the paper still, let me get their numbers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marluxia and Larxene, the bestest friends forever, send them an address on the Eastside of Oblivion that is about seven blocks from Roxas’ house. Roxas and Xion bid Naminé a polite farewell and then head out on their boards. The day is suddenly super warm, almost sticky - odd for their area, which has a generally temperate and dry climate. Roxas reflects on how gross and sweaty he is in his hoodie and jeans as he and Xion roll up to the smallish apartment complex - </span>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe I should have worn a T-shirt</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thinks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh well. Foresight is 20/20.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They said they lived in the upstairs apartment, right?” Xion says, then leads the way up the stairs to apartment C. She’s the one to knock on the door, and she reaches out and holds Roxas’ hand as they wait amidst the sudden barking of a very large dog within the apartment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After the barking has died down, the door comes open to reveal a tall, busty blonde with slicked back hair - the same ice cold bitch from last night. She looks at Roxas and Xion and immediately releases a low, snickering laugh. “Oh my god, Marley, these kids are fucking hobbits! What are you guys, like five-feet-four?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas - who is five-feet-seven, thank you very much - looks at Xion, his short-stack almost-girlfriend. She looks bewildered; he sort of glares back at the woman. “Nice to see you, too. Can we come in?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure, cutie pie!” The woman - Larxene - steps back to let Roxas and Xion into the apartment, her smile somewhat venomous. “Mind the doggy gate, and the snake on the ceiling, and I’m pretty sure the lovebirds are loose in here too - you might step or sit on bird shit somewhere.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas is overwhelmed with sensation and feeling as he moves into the living room. There is a metal grate of a dog gate cutting off the kitchen and a great, growling Rottweiler the size of a baby horse beyond it; a hunk of timberwood installed to the ceiling and a butterscotch yellow Burmese python hanging from it, big chilling. A man with dusty pink hair is stepping over the dog gate into the living room, holding a green and peach lovebird on his raised finger. Roxas thinks his head will explode, and he suddenly very much wants to fly in the direction of every window and door in the domicile - not just to check them, but to fling himself through them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh my God,” Xion is saying, looking all around with an expression of pure wonder on her face. “This is so dope!” she cries, turning to Larxene and grinning wildly. “Can I hold your snake?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nobody holds the Marquis de Sade but Larxene,” the man with pink hair - Marluxia - says from where he’s sitting down on the black leather couch. He canoodles briefly with his bird, then says to his guests, “You guys can sit down. I’m not going to offer you a drink or anything because I’m kind of hoping you won’t stay long.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s fine,” Roxas says coldly, going to sit on the nearest seat - a chair in the shape of a big high-heeled shoe. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion, pouting a little, sits opposite of Marluxia on the couch. She pulls out her notebook and a ballpoint pen, turning to her sheet with all the information about Axel’s curse and the van. “Okay..” she says, sounding uncertain of herself, then starts up with more resolve. “So you guys talked to Axel last night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Axel - that tall dude with the red dreadlocks?” Larxene asks, coming to stand in the middle of the room. She crosses her arms over her Slipknot T-shirt. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Shit</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that dude was hot. He was kind of weird, though, hard to get a read on him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That sounds like Axel</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Roxas thinks and doesn’t say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you really want to sleep with that guy?” Marluxia asks. The lovebird suddenly flies off of his finger and around the room, and Roxas really thinks he’s going to start screaming. He could have taken his Xanax before he left the house, or at least snuck a few bars into his pocket, but then he wouldn’t have enjoyed his day with Xion or gotten anything productive done. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Calmly watching the lovebird flit around, Larxene replies, “Hell yeah, dude. He was really sexy and really smart, he just seemed, you know. Crazy and weird.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas kind of wants to laugh, thinking of how Axel described her and Marluxia. </span>
  <em>
    <span>If only they knew what crazy really was</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thinks to himself, thanking God or some other higher power when the lovebird finally settles down on a perch near the window.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look, sleeping with Axel aside,” Xion says, looking halfway like she wants to laugh (and Roxas wonders idly if </span>
  <em>
    <span>she</span>
  </em>
  <span> would sleep with Axel, given the chance). “His van got stolen last night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know, I was so pissed off!” Larxene cries in her high and kind of weaselly voice, which makes her sound like she’s from California or a high schooler. “He was going to take me home and bed me, and he had this end table that I wanted to look at.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Plus herb,” Marluxia puts in, lighting up a joint wrapped with pink paper as he says it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Plus herb,” Larxene echoes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We were wondering if you guys saw or heard anything that might help us find the van,” Xion says, and Roxas realizes with a feeling of sinking idiocy that he’s letting her take the reins and talk to these wackos, which he swore he wouldn’t do. At least she’s really good at what she’s doing. “Obviously we can’t go to the police because there was contraband inside, so we’re kind of just grasping at straws trying to find it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you going to pay us?” Larxene asks. Roxas flinches. He didn’t think about offering compensation for their help, but now he’s thinking he probably should have.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion immediately starts digging around in her backpack, searching for something. Eventually, she pulls out a handful of pretty rocks - lapis lazuli, citrine, moonstone, and heliotrope. She holds her hand out to Larxene and says, “You can have one of these if you want.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Larxene inspects the collection of gemstones, her lined eyes narrowed. She snatches up the citrine with a grin, holding it possessively to her chest and admiring it in the light as she says, “Thanks, doll. You’re not so bad.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas silently marvels that Xion is the kind of person to just tote around precious gems. He finds that he likes her more and more the longer he knows her, that he wants to know her more the longer he spends with her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So there were a lot of weirdos at that party last night,” Larxene comments thoughtfully, placing her new citrine on the coffee table. “Lowlife kids with nothing better to do than dress up like clowns for fun on a Friday night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was one of those clowns,” Xion comments evenly, not looking altogether too offended on the surface but hurt in her eyes, Roxas can see it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, you were awesome, really, I loved it,” Larxene backtracks, being oddly nice. She turns to Marluxia and asks, “Wasn’t she beautiful? With that huge fucking sword?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do love a beautiful sword,” Marluxia remarks, still taking longish drags off of his joint, apparently trying to get higher than a kite.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m just saying, with the exception of you and the other DnD’ers - and possibly even some of them, that Xemnas guy as weird as hell - everyone there was a fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>freak</span>
  </em>
  <span>, dude.” Larxene scoffs, waving a sharply manicured hand dismissively in the air. “I don’t even know why we went there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why did you go, then, if you’re so averse to geeks and crackpots?” Roxas interjects, having heard just about enough of Larxene’s scorn. He’s tired of being in these people’s house, tired of the dog still barking at the gate in the kitchen doorway, tired of the smell of shit and decaying meat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Larxene and Marluxia share a look and burst into laughter at Roxas’ expense. Xion gives Roxas a long, sweet look like she wants to hold his hand or kiss him or something, and Roxas just telegraphs a smile back to her, hoping they will get in a good liplock or two after they get out of this place. Larxene, once she’s able to compose herself, looks at Roxas and says, “It’s fun to hang out with the strange ones sometimes. They’re a blast to make fun of, obviously.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You two are really, really amusing,” Marluxia notes, ashing his joint in a </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sailor Moon</span>
  </em>
  <span> ashtray on the coffee table. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look, we just want to know if  you guys saw or heard something.” Roxas’ expression is no-nonsense. “We gave you payment, we’re taking up space in your house - can we just get on with things?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Larxene and Marluxia share another look, this one marginally more serious. This time, Larxene doesn’t answer - it’s the pink-haired of them that replies, saying, “There was this kid in camo pants talking about how he wanted to go downtown. He was hanging out around the bathroom with his geek friends - a fattie and a real pretty brunette with green eyes. He said he was going to hitch a ride and then he pulled out a Slim Jim.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas and Xion look at each other, confusion plain on their faces. “A </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘Slim Jim</span>
  </em>
  <span>’?” Roxas asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a thin piece of metal that you shove into the little space between a car window and the door to unlock the latch,” Larxene explains in an annoyed tone of voice, rolling her eyes. “Really, is it amateur hour? Are you guys, like, twelve?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas chooses to ignore this comment, instead focusing on the real meat of what Marluxia and Larxene have told them. Axel’s van is in downtown Portland, possibly on the Willamette River. That will be the first place they check when they head in that direction, he decides. He turns to Xion, saying, “We’ve got to go to the river. I have a feeling that’s where it’ll be.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion jots this down in her notebook, looking sort of triumphant. “Cool!” she chirps, then stands up all at once, her rocks and her notebook put away in her backpack. She bows like a sensei at Marluxia and Larxene. “Thanks, guys. That was actually a lot of help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah, get the fuck out of our house,” Marluxia says with wave of his hand, his eyeballs on the ceiling. “I want to go masturbate and I can’t do that with strangers in my apartment.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, okay, bye!” Roxas almost yells, getting up out of his stiletto shoe chair and moving in the direction of the door. Larxene is grinning as she lets them out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out!” he cries with a hysterical cackle, then slams the door on them, the dog still barking in the background. Roxas immediately pulls Xion into his arms as soon as it’s just the two of them, him needing her presence and her affection so much.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh my God, that was fucking insane,” he says into her hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They weren’t so bad!” Xion laughs, putting her arms around him and squeezing him a little. “I really liked their pets.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, the ones that couldn’t kill us,” Roxas comments wrly as they walk down the stairs with their skateboards. Xion bumps him gently, affectionately on the shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their next stop is the library on the edge of Oblivion, right on the corporal limit between the suburb and Portland proper. They pick up ice cream on the way there, licking good sea salt frostiness from each other’s fingers as they stand by the little ice cream stand close by Marluxia and Larxene’s apartment. Roxas is surprised that Xion likes sea salt ice cream as much as he does, as the only other person he’s ever met who has liked it with a similar fervor has been Axel. He tells her this while they lick, and Xion smiles and comments, “We should get some with him one day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas wonders idly how much Xion likes Axel. “Do you think of him as a friend?” he asks, trying not to sound suspicious because he truly isn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course I do,” Xion remarks. “He’s your best friend, isn’t he? And we’re kind of, you know, hanging out and talking right now. It would be strange if Axel wasn’t my friend.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas acknowledges this as true. He takes a healthy bite out of his ice cream bar and ends up with brainfreeze; Xion kisses his pain away, holding his hand and cooing over him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they arrive at the library, there aren’t that many people there, this being a small regional library with significantly less resources than the main campus in Portland. It is a single-story, mid-century modern structure with great big windows, populated almost singularly by Dungeons and Dragons players, nerds reading </span>
  <em>
    <span>Harry Potter</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Animorphs</span>
  </em>
  <span> books, and mothers with their young children. Xion leads Roxas right up to the front desk when they walk in, where Xemnas and Saïx are puttering around - the former with a binder in his hand, the latter on a desktop computer with a digital card catalogue pulled up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Xemnas, Saïx!” Xion chirps as she leans against the counter, giving each of them a quick salute. “How are you guys today?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Saïx looks up from his computer with a sort of bored expression on his face that doesn’t change despite Xion’s presence. “Busy,” he comments, and Roxas wonders briefly for maybe the sixtieth time if Xion is actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>friends</span>
  </em>
  <span> with these people, and why and how she got entangled with two men in their mid-thirties. Saïx turns to Xemnas, who is still looking through the binder in his hand, and asks, “Aren’t we busy today, boss?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xemnas makes a noise of acknowledgement in his throat and looks at Xion over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. “Indeed,” he says, then seems to notice Roxas’ presence. “What are you two doing here? I assume not reading books.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We might take a look at the stacks a little later if you can’t help us,” Xion says with a somewhat sheepish look. She pulls her notebook and pen out of her backpack. “I was wondering if you guys could give us a hand, lend us your brains for a bit. We’re kind of in a pickle.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Saïx and Xemnas look at each other, contemplative and inscrutable. The former turns back to Roxas and Xion and asks, “What’s the nature of this quandary?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It seems like a curse,” Xion replies easily. “One of our friends is stuck in a house and can’t get out, and we think there’s something supernatural involved.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Both Saïx and Xemnas become serious and somewhat intense as soon as Xion says the word </span>
  <em>
    <span>curse</span>
  </em>
  <span>, as if it’s some kind of dogwhistle they’ve been specifically trained to listen for. They share another ambiguous look (</span>
  <em>
    <span>what is with that?</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Roxas thinks, imagining the librarians as an old married couple that has somehow achieved telepathy after years of practice and shared togetherness), then Xemnas says, in a low and quiet voice that he was not using before, “Curses are serious business, Xion. You don’t want to get entangled with that stuff.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion looks entirely unfazed, and Roxas loves her for this. “I’m not scared,” she replies with a dismissive wave of the hand. “I just want to get to the bottom of it and help out my new friends, you know? Because they deserve it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do they?” Saïx asks, observing Roxas coolly. Roxas just stares back, taking in Saïx’s strange hazel eyes that are almost yellow, the ghastly scar that criss-crosses the bridge of his nose, his cerulean ponytail. He wishes he could say he was scared of Saïx, but mostly, he just finds that he’s annoyed in the same way he was annoyed at Marluxia and Larxene.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion, for her part, is nodding affirmatively. “They do.” The words come easily, as if she hadn’t thought about them at all before she said them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xemnas closes his binder and sets it down on the desk in front of him. His brown skin is washed out and weird in the unpleasant overhead fluorescent light, his silver hair thick down his back and across his shoulders. He fixes Xion with a grave look, leaning forward to speak into her face as he asks, “How much do you want to know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anything at all you could offer would be great,” Xion says, already poised with her notebook and pen. “Spill the beans, boss.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xemnas affects the hint of a smile - a super unsettling sight, to be frank. He leans back and crosses his arms over his muscular chest and speaks, clear and certain of himself. “This is just hearsay - things we’ve picked up in our research as librarians, that is - but most curses are tied to objects instead of people. Objects are easy conduits for magic, especially black magic, which easily turns volatile when you attempt to focus it on people. You have an object that is cursed that’s affecting your new friend, and it needs to be destroyed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion jots all of this down, her bottom lip caught in her teeth in an adorable expression of deep concentration. Roxas could lose himself in watching Xion be a human, but instead, he focuses on the conversation at hand and asks, “How do you destroy cursed objects? Do you just burn them, or what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Heavens no,” Saïx says in a condescending tone, turning back to his computer and clicking around a little as he talks. “Cursed objects need to be destroyed with special ceremonies, often involving a sacrifice.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sacrifice?” Roxas and Xion ask in unison.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Animals are generally the most common way to go.” Saïx sounds uninterested, almost tired, as he rattles off facts from God knows what books he’s been reading. “Child sacrifices are extremely powerful, as are virgin sacrifices. The sacrifice has to be special, though. You can’t just grab a stray cat off the street, kill it, and call it a day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We weren’t planning on killing any stray cats…” Roxas comments, scratching his head nervously.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Saïx shrugs. “Just in case.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What could be cursed?” Xion asks. “Does that have to be special, too?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Any object can be cursed,” Xemnas clarifies, sort of rolling his eyes a little at the peons he’s being forced to deal with. “It doesn’t have to have any true material or immaterial value - it is simply cursed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well that could be anything,” Roxas says with an irritated sigh. The only saving grace of today is that he’ll be tearing up his house looking for a cursed whatever with Xion and Axel - his favorite people in Oblivion if not the world at this point, if the narrator is to be truthful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it worth it to free your friend?” Xemnas asks. His tone - always serious - has suddenly morphed into something severe, grave, almost dark. “Wouldn’t you rather leave well enough alone and just let him spend his days indoors?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas tries to imagine Axel confined to his house for eternity. Axel, who runs wild in the streets and drives the van everywhere and is everybody’s best friend and worst enemy, stuck watching Netflix and playing Tetris on Roxas’ PlayStation for the rest of his life, until he’s gray and decrepit and his face tattoos have ceased to be cool and become simply gauche, a mistake he made in his early twenties on a whim. It is such a profoundly sad thought that he rejects it entirely, shaking his head and saying, “Of course it’s worth it. He deserves to be free.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Saïx shrugs and remarks, “Your funeral.” This rubs Roxas the wrong way, but he says nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion thanks her superiors for the help and spends twenty minutes dragging Roxas all over the occult section of the stacks, skimming tomes for handy information about sacrificial ceremonies and what they entail. Prayer, fire, blood - nothing overly complicated. For the moment, Roxas doesn’t think about what they have to sacrifice, knowing he has no pets and nothing of value to get rid of, save maybe his PlayStation. Instead, he reads over Xion’s shoulder, listening to her voice the words on the page with something fluttering softly in his gut, reminding him of his humanity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After the library, they decide to take a trip into Portland proper to locate the van. They skate past the Oregon Zoo, the arboretum, and the Japanese gardens, stopping briefly to snap pictures of the scenery with their smartphones before moving on to the mean streets of Downtown. They check the museum, the concert hall, and the farmer’s market with no success; Roxas is about to give up hope entirely when on their skate past the waterfront, he spots it - the wreck of the white Ford Transit parked right alongside the Willamette River, with its charmingly cracked windshield and OBLIVION RULES spray-painted in black on the left side of the van (the latter a new addition since last night).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh my God, it’s a mess!” Roxas exclaims as he and Xion approach the vehicle on their boards. He rubs a loving hand over the graffiti now desecrating the sacred van. “Why would someone do this?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For fun,” Xion replies without missing a beat, not looking altogether too bothered by the vandalism. She pulls Axel’s keys out of her backpack and jingles them emphatically in the air, grinning at Roxas. “May I drive?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas would love nothing more than to be her passenger, so he says, “Of course.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They inspect the inside of the van before they go, finding that the end table is intact but the contraband, of course, is not. As they drive back to Roxas’ Craftsman in Oblivion, Roxas puts his hand on Xion’s lower thigh and listens her rap along to the terrible trap music on the radio, adoring her as he has adored almost nothing for what seems like forever. As they pull up to the house, his hand moves curiously, hungrily into her hair. She makes a sound almost like purring, then - keying the ignition off - moves across the center console to kiss him fully on the mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why are you so cool?” Roxas asks into the early-afternoon air between them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because you think I am,” comes Xion’s easy retort.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Axel is pleased to see the van is back and intact from where he can safely observe the world through the house’s front windows. He is wearing one of Roxas’ T-shirts - a black Joy Division tee that cuts off above his hip bones thanks to his vastly superior height over his younger friend - and a pair of sweatpants he probably filched out of the laundry hamper when he took a shower earlier. He gives Roxas and Xion a look of mixed appreciation and suspicion when they come laughing in the door, hand-in-hand with Axel’s keys in tow. Squinting his eyes, he asks them, “You kids haven’t been having too much fun without me, now have you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, no, we’ve been having a blast,” Roxas replies with a note of sarcasm in his tone. “Those crazies you sent us to? Absolutely bonkers, but they helped us find your van.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s what matters,” Axel says with a flippant shrug.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now we just need to find that cursed object,” Xion says, putting her backpack down on the sofa next to where Axel is sitting. She turns to her new friends. “Any thoughts?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas reviews the previous night in his head for long moments. The first half of the party was pretty unremarkable, barring Xion’s everything, but after the session wrapped up and he and Axel started drinking in earnest, everything got a little fuzzy. He racks his brain for anything unusual, anything that smacks of the supernatural or evil, and just when he believes it’s not going to come to him, it does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh my God,” he announces to the room, then - without waiting for a reaction - makes a beeline for his bedroom. There it is on the nightstand - the car key he hadn’t seen in his life at all before last night, a nondescript thing with small LOCK, UNLOCK, ALARM, and TRUNK buttons on it. He brings this key back into the living room and puts it in Xion’s hand. “This is it,” he says triumphantly. “I’m like eighty-five percent sure that this is it. It turned up last night and I have no idea where it came from.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion does a little dance with the key, holding it up in the air like baby Simba. “Holy crap, you’re right! This has to be it!” She kisses it, slips it into her pocket, and says, “We have to celebrate. Do you have alcohol?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas smiles, his eyes going from Xion to Axel and back. “I think there might be an old bottle of Kahlua somewhere in here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he and Xion find rum/coffee liqueur and pour three glasses while Axel goes to the bathroom after several hours of drinking Mountain Dew. Roxas clinks his glass with Xion’s in cheers, watching her putter around his kitchen. Suddenly, he’s thinking of her spending more time with him, doing this and saying nothing. Suddenly, he wants to melt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So…” Xion takes a sip of Kahlua and runs her fingers along the countertop. She opens the utensil drawer and peers curiously inside of it. “What are we going to do about that sacrifice?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh shit</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Roxas thinks, mentally smacking himself in the head for his forgetfulness. “Crap, man, I have no idea.” He looks into his glass as if its contents are the answer to their quandary. “I guess we could buy a kitten off Craigslist, get attached to it, and then kill it a month from now and Axel can just lay low until then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion lifts a chef’s knife out of the drawer and inspects it, laughing a little bitterly. “That’s actually a really great idea.” She turns to Roxas with the knife still in hand, looking pained. “It’s just sad that it can’t be that way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean?” Roxas asks, but before he can think or even say anything else, Xion is rushing at him with the knife, aiming for his stomach. Unthinking, pure instinct, he dodges her and grabs the wrist connected to the hand holding the knife, holding it as far away from his body as physically possible. His Kahlua and a mess of broken glass are on the floor. He has no idea what’s going on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Xion, what the fuck?!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xion has tears on her face. She’s struggling against him, trying to twist out of his grip like a cat. “I like you so much,” she sobs. “It’s just- you’re a virgin and, and- they made me do it! They have to release the demons!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you talking about?!” Roxas cries, squeezing her wrist as hard as he might. “You’re acting crazy!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Xion says, then closes her eyes tight. “It’s just what I was made for.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then she is bringing the knife down hard against Roxas’ shoulder, cutting him through his hoodie and pulling from him a vicious yell. Without processing it, Roxas flips Xion onto the floor by her wrist and her waist, pinning her to the linoleum and grappling with her to get the knife out of her hand. It is a full thirty seconds of struggle before he manages to get the upper hand; cursing wildly, he uses the knife to stab Xion directly in her throat, snapping through her jugular and sending arterial spray flinging directly into his face. Xion gurgles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh shit,” is what Roxas thinks she says. Pulling the knife out of her throat, she cups her hands around the gash spraying blood and whines. “God…” And then her eyes are going back in her head and all at once, she is gone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas pants, heaving air, his lungs begging for oxygen. He is covered in Xion’s blood, sitting on top of her, and completely confused as to what just happened. Without warning, there is the strong scent of sulfur in the air and Xion’s body is sort of melting and burning at the same time, disappearing into a thick black cloud of smoke that travels through Roxas and up towards the ceiling. Roxas can’t hear anything, not until there is a hand on the back of his neck and Axel’s voice is traveling as if through some unknown, immeasurably long passage to him, asking, “Dude, what the fuck just happened? Why is there blood everywhere?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas looks up at Axel through a wet red haze. “Xion’s gone,” he croaks, touching his chest and the bloody knife on the floor. The car key that was in Xion’s pocket is sitting next to the knife. “Oh my God, I think she was set up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What the hell are you talking about?” Axel, in his band tee and with his dreadlocks pulled back and up into a ponytail, is looking at Roxas as if he’s gone insane. His green-hazel eyes, wide with alarm and disbelief, fix Roxas to the spot. “‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>Set up</span>
  </em>
  <span>’? What, is that some kind of code?!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know, Axel, I don’t know!” Roxas yells, his voice cracking somewhere in the middle of the exclamation. “She said, ‘they made me do it,’ and she was talking about the virgin sacrifice and…” He puts his face in his hands. “Oh my God. She was really going to kill me because I’m a virgin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Axel’s expression goes shocked and outraged. “Crazy bitch,” he mutters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No…” Slowly, Roxas makes his way to his feet, bringing the knife and the car key with him. “She was just trapped.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They look at each other for a long time, expressions morphing through various stages of anger, regret, and sorrow. Neither of them know quite what to do, and as Roxas holds the knife and the key in his hands, he realizes that this trouble - Axel’s curse, and all of the turmoil he feels about Xion (who he actually liked so much) - it will only end with his end. Suddenly, it dawns on him that he was always going to be the sacrifice, whether Xion did away with him or he did away with himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I gotta do it, Axel,” he says, stepping closer to his friend. “It’s the only way to make all this stop.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you talking about?” Axel asks, and then, all of a sudden, Roxas has his arms around him and is clinging to him as he instinctively clings to life itself. Axel shakes his head, gingerly putting his arms around Roxas’ quaking body, cringing at the blood that is now smearing itself all over his neck and chest. “You’re not going to do something stupid, are you? Because I will end you if you do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You promise?” Roxas asks, looking into Axel’s face and crying salty tears through the blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Axel smiles gently at him, putting a hand at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas finds that this response makes him incredibly peaceful. He steps back away from Axel, gives his friend the car key, and says, “You gotta say a prayer after this, okay? Two Hail Marys or something, and wish for the curse to be broken.” He holds the knife and his left wrist out in front of him, breathing hard. “Let’s just hope it works.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Roxas?” Axel is asking, totally confused, and then Roxas is slitting the knife’s blade down hard across his left wrist, which immediately begins to spurt blood. The mess of his flesh cut down deep into the ligaments and the muscle is enough to nauseate Roxas; he immediately barfs Kahlua and stomach acid onto the linoleum floor amidst Axel’s wild cursing and crying, the older man grabbing his wrist as if to tourniquet the wound with his hand. The last thing Roxas hears before losing consciousness is Axel’s frenzied voice, saying, “I’m gonna kill you, Roxas! If you don’t die I’m gonna fucking kill you!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And you know what? That’s actually pretty nice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas didn’t expect dying to be like stage four sleep. Total blackness, a void of existence, no light at the end of the tunnel or angels or demons wherever he was destined to go. When he stops being dead, coming to in the emergency room at Providence Portland Medical Center with a heart rate/blood pressure monitor hooked up to him via various wires, he wonders groggily if nothingness was purgatory - the intermediary between heaven and hell, where you suffered not with eternal damnation nor frolicked with the saints, but simply slept for the rest of time. He thinks he liked that better than any other prospective afterlife he’s ever heard of.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he realizes that he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nurses ask him in gentle yet firm voices if he was feeling suicidal. There are psych evals and a twenty-four hour suicide watch, where Roxas is supervised at all times and he eats the hamburgers and pancakes brought to him from the hospital cafeteria. He wants to call Axel so badly, but he has no access to a phone and every time he asks the nurses or orderlies for help, they walk off to get him answers and never come back. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This is purgatory</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Roxas thinks. This is what death was destined to be for him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, though, he does go home. He takes a taxi from the hospital on the river to his Craftsman in Oblivion, his wrists bandaged with gauze and Ace and prescription pain pills from the hospital pharmacy in his pocket. When he walks into the house on this day at the end of September, Axel is sitting on his sofa in another one of his T-shirts and sweatpants, watching something inane on Netflix and eating a bowl of Captain Crunch. Axel fixes him with a look of intense love and hatred. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will fucking kill you, Roxas.” He gets up off the sofa and literally picks Roxas up off of the ground, holding him so tightly in his arms. “Do not ever do that to me again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas melts. “I love you too, Axel.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, you fucking idiot.” Axel puts his mouth hard against the top of Roxas’ head. “You big fucking idiot.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>i'm actually sad about what happened to xion. i was rooting for them.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. ACT THREE</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h1>
  <em>
    <span>ACT THREE</span>
  </em>
</h1><p> </p><p>
  <span>Life after Xion proves strange. Roxas never imagined that he would fall in love, get his heart broken, and end up somehow happier and more miserable than he ever could have dreamed he’d be by the time he turned twenty-five, but it seems that the universe had other plans for him. Who is he, the puniest ant in a cosmos of tiny things, to argue with God?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The biggest change is having a roommate. Being that Axel has expressly forbid Roxas from sacrificing himself to unhex him, Axel has semi-permanently-to-permanently taken up residence in Roxas’ house, which is another thing Roxas didn’t think would happen to him, him being as terminally uncool as he is and Axel being the exact opposite of that. He likes the arrangement, though. It’s different, and it’s fun, and it’s interesting living with and learning so intimately the person he calls his best friend, who he thought he knew well but really had no clue as to the depths of the saintliness and depravity that live inside Axel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Axel is a morning person. Roxas never would have guessed this. Roxas, who sleeps like a cat for fourteen-hour stretches through the mornings and early afternoons, finds himself waking up earlier and earlier to get pestered by Axel, who is also the most incredibly needy and high-maintenance person Roxas has ever met in his life. Axel doesn’t like to be alone, which is weird for a person as cool and collected as he is. Roxas used to think of Axel as the Lone Ranger, cruising the Oblivion streets on his white horse (the van) and occasionally dealing with small-timers and old friends like Demyx, Larxene, and Marluxia, but the truth is, Axel just wants to be paid attention to at all times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” Axel says to him in the mornings when he nods off on the couch while Axel is playing </span>
  <em>
    <span>Cuphead </span>
  </em>
  <span>or </span>
  <em>
    <span>Grand Theft Auto</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He pokes Roxas with one long finger. “Are you paying attention? I just fucking demolished this shit, bro.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s cute and it’s profoundly nice to be so needed, to have his attention so expressly desired by Axel. Attention is the beginning of devotion, and Roxas finds himself more devoted to Axel each day they live together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He makes grocery lists, making down Axel’s pastrami and his margherita pizzas and his Monster energy drinks because he’s a disgusting fiend that likes to get caffeinated and destroy Roxas when they play co-op </span>
  <em>
    <span>Call of Duty</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Axel makes drug deals out of the house somehow, and Roxas is just his cool friend who weighs the herb and finds plastic Ziploc bags in the kitchen to send the weed out in. Roxas doesn’t contemplate the illegality or the sketchiness of their activities until Marluxia and Larxene start coming over regularly to buy and hang out and smoke. This is the point when Roxas begins to realize the true craziness of his drug-dealing, hex-breaking, demon-infested life - this, when Larxene puts her manicured hand on his face and says, “You’re one of the bad ones now, silly rabbit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Silly rabbit?” Roxas asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve just got that look,” Larxene explains with a wolfish grin, and then Axel is coming up behind her and smacking her hard on the ass (because apparently the sexual tension between them has never quite gone away, though Roxas knows for a fact they’ve never slept together).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Quit bugging my angelface,” he says, grabbing Larxene by the waist and pulling her away into the living room. “Come shotgun a joint with me. You alright, Roxas?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas smiles evenly, plainly everything in the world but alright. “We can talk about it later,” he says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is all Axel needs to hear. Later, Roxas cries a little and Axel puts a hand on the back of his neck and swirls eightlike patterns into the hairy nape with the pads of his fingers. “I can’t believe this is my life now,” he weeps, wiping the snot from his face with the back of his wrist.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Join the club, we’ve got jackets,” Axel remarks, then takes a hit off of his third joint of the night and ashes it in the crystal tray on the coffee table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The demons are there. They are everywhere. They inhabit the space around the house at night, necessitating the pouring of salt lines across thresholds and windows so that they do not enter. Roxas still hears them howling and fucking in the backyard and in the alleyways alongside the house at night when he tries to sleep, and it is on the nights when he hears them (which, incidentally, happens more and more often the longer time goes on) that he goes to where Axel sleeps on the sofa and asks him to come share the bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just can’t fucking settle down with all the noise,” he explains, holding his head. “Can you hear them? Or am I just crazy?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I hear them too.” Axel sighs, getting up off of the sofa and pushing Roxas back in the direction of his bedroom. “Let’s go. Maybe we’ll end up staying up all night talking to each other like we’re having a sleepover and the demons will leave then, eh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All Roxas knows is that he is calm simply at the prospect of having another body by his side tonight. He falls into a fitful, dream-filled sleep, but he sleeps nonetheless.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has duties now. Armed with salt, holy water, a silver kitchen knife, and his little prayer book, Roxas ventures out into the world to vanquish the demons that have populated Oblivion in the wake of Xion’s death/release. At least once a week, he stops by the library to check out some book on demonology or purifying rituals or black magic or general witchcraft, and Xemnas and Saïx give him odd looks with their wire-rimmed glasses and long blue ponytails, wryly asking him how things are going and what oh what could have happened to Xion?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know,” Roxas replies with a sharp, even look. “You tell me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xemnas and Saïx are unfazed. Saïx scans the barcode off of his books and hands them and his library card back to him with a tiny flourish. “Enjoy your books,” he says with an unfriendly smile. Roxas doesn’t deign to return it, just walks out of the suburban campus gnashing his teeth and missing Xion, missing Xion so fucking bad.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the parking lot, a small child with black eyes jumps onto him with his mouth wide open, trying to bite him or his fingers. Roxas grabs the bottle of holy water out of his pocket and sprays it liberally in a wide open circuit around him, running away amidst the demonic shrieking of the imp child. He gets in Axel’s van and inspects the bite on his hand, how it is bleeding and his fingers have splayed out slightly unnaturally. When he gets home, Axel orders orange chicken and combination fried rice from the Chinese place close to The Shop and treats his wounds with rubbing alcohol, Neosporin, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Blue’s Clues</span>
  </em>
  <span> Band-Aids from the Dollar Tree.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve got to stop letting them catch you off guard,” Axel gently chastises him, turning to put the first aid supplies back in the medicine cabinet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas rolls his knuckles beneath his Band-Aids, shaking his head and his hand. “They’re out for me, I swear. Somehow when she died Xion attached them to me, or the house, or Oblivion, if you can even call that death. It’s more like she was vanquished.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>The mother of all evil</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Axel sing-songs in a facetious, eerie tone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I miss her,” Roxas admits without thinking. He’s probably said some variation of this every day since Xion sank into hell never to be seen again, and as much as Axel thinks he should be angry at Xion for deceiving him (if that is in fact what she did), Roxas can’t find it within him to resent her, maybe because she was too pretty, or her deception was so great, or he has simply gone soft in the middle of his twenties. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever it is, Axel gives him a hard but sympathetic look and says, “Isn’t it sad how the only girl you could have ever even begun to make it work with was a demoness from down below who tried to kill you with a kitchen knife because you’re a virgin?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I literally think about that every moment of the day on repeat at maximum volume,” Roxas replies without missing a beat, passing into the bathroom doorway. He looks back at Axel, smiling wryly, painfully. “Thanks for the reminder.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Axel’s expression is deeply apologetic. Axel is an apology of a person, truthfully, always on the defense for himself and just about everything he’s ever done or cared for. Turning off the light above the sink, he crowds Roxas fully out of the room and says, “You need to get yourself a side piece. Try again with Naminé. She’s a nice chick, sensitive, you know. You guys could mourn together or something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas makes a dull noise of disinterest as they walk into the living room. “I’m more interested in redheads and like, non-white people, you know.” He flops onto the couch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Axel, with his dreads the color of a firetruck and his olive-toned skin belying South Asian and Sub-Saharan African ancestry, gives Roxas a piercing, curious look. “Methinks you’re teasing me,” he says, then shakes his index finger back and forth. “Bad to tease a lonely man.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas just crosses his arms over his face and sighs, waiting for the moment when Axel comes to sit with him on the sofa, lifting his legs into his lap. There is Axel’s hand on his knee, soothing him. Tomorrow, he’s going to have to order more holy water in bulk and start learning some DIY self-defense moves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He still goes to The Shop, obviously. He’d spent his inheritance on it after all, and it was the cornerstone of his life before Xion and the demons usurped that throne in such fantastic fashion. In the early afternoons after Naminé has opened up shop alone and manned the register for boring hour upon boring hour, Roxas strolls in, checks the windows and the doors as he always does and always has, and then finds his place behind the front desk to draw for hours, making minimal but pleasant conversation with his general manager all the while. He draws her face sometimes, the strange expressions she makes while she herself sketches with gouache and pastel; he draws the kids coming in to put their sticky fingers on laminated vintage volumes of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Journey Into Mystery</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Fantastic Four</span>
  </em>
  <span>, their cowlicks, their crooked teeth; and yes, he draws still the high schoolers of yore, Kurt Cobain imitators with acne, various gradations of adipose tissue in various places on the body, band T-shirts. Mostly, though, his attentions have shifted to Axel and the demons, and one day when Naminé is flipping through his sketches while he peruses the back room for another box of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Saga</span>
  </em>
  <span>s, he realizes this  - the depths of his fixation - as he hadn’t known it before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s really beautiful, Roxas,” Naminé says to him when he comes back, pointing at the corner of a page of his sketchbook where Axel in his most blissed out and triumphant expression has been painstakingly committed to page and thus to memory. “I didn’t know you had an eye like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas shrugs, placing the box he’d left to retrieve on the counter with a sigh. “I didn’t either,” he replies. He wonders what it means that Axel is beautiful because he made him beautiful. He’ll have to go back to college for a couple more years to puzzle that one out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Naminé moves on to the depictions of imps, shadows, figures with gaping mouths, yellow eyes piercing through the darkness. “Where did these come from, though?” she asks, poring curiously over each monstrous figure. “These aren’t for your life drawing class, are they? You’re not actually seeing these things?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It occurs to Roxas that he could come off as a schizophrenic simply for fighting demons on the daily - demons that he knows are real, demons that are realer than anything he’s ever experienced since moving to Oblivion. Slyly, he starts to unbox the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Saga</span>
  </em>
  <span> volumes and says, “Of course not. That’s not the right brand of mental illness.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Naminé gives him a look of bashful amusement. She continues to flip through Roxas’ sketchbook of Axels, demons, and Xions, and if she notices anything else worth talking about, she keeps it to herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After work, Roxas goes to the drug store to pick up his Xanax and his antidepressant. In the snack aisle, while he’s getting Axel’s opinions on what flavor Powerade he wants and if Flamin’ Hot chips are superior to salt and vinegar chips, an old woman with an onyx cane scuttles right up to him and throws strange powder in his face. The same sulfuric, rotten eggs smell that accompanied Xion’s death is upon Roxas, and he is coughing, falling to the floor in a daze. Three minutes later, a pharmacist is fanning him off and telling him to put his head between his knees and breathe. This is life after Xion. This is what it has all come to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Junk and fast food loaded with salt and seasonings and cheese for dinner in the evening; Axel’s stellar bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits with fresh orange juice in the morning for breakfast.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marluxia and Larxene hanging around the house to smoke weed and flirt with Axel, and Roxas walking out of the room and going to bed when it becomes apparent that Larxene will, in fact, swap spit with his best friend regardless of who’s present.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Totaling the van just in time for Halloween, chasing a demon down the Portland streets until spiraling out of control in a nondescript cul-de-sac three miles from home -  the windows busted, the van’s short snout dented and the front bumper twisted beyond recognition. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Axel at night in Roxas’ bed, putting a hand on the crown of his head and telling him it’ll be alright in the morning - always, in the morning, it will be alright.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sometimes Roxas runs across the remaining members of Xion’s Dungeons and Dragons group/cult, and if they suspect him of suspecting them of having anything to do with her death, they don’t really show it. They talk in short syllables and give him hints about how to dispel the demons - easy to remember prayers and websites that sell protective amulets that he might want to acquire for himself and for Axel. He sinks into their world and sees their blank faces as spectres hanging above him like the figures at Notre Dame, mocking him for his failure to foil their plan to unleash Xion and her demonic spawn upon the world. It’s surreal, and Roxas takes every day as it comes to him one at a time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At night, he dreams of Xion in his kitchen, eating sea salt ice cream. She always eats more in the dream than she ate in real life, gorging herself as if to prove to him, </span>
  <em>
    <span>yes, Roxas, I was human after all</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He mourns her presence as he mourns Sora’s, and on Wednesdays when he makes his way to the hospital to sit by his twin’s bed and tell him all about the world as it has flipped upside down in Sora’s absence, he wipes his eyes and says, “She was a lot like you, actually. Happy and fun and willing to experience anything.” Smiling at Sora’s duct-taped mouth and eyes, Roxas finds himself oddly soothed by the beep of the heart rate monitor and the gentle rise and fall of his brother’s chest. He goes home feeling lighter than he’d felt in so long. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Axel asks him about finally choosing their sacrifice tonight. “I’ve been looking at Craigslist,” the older man says, handing Roxas his phone and showing him an ad for a three week old kitten with crusty eyes. “All we have to do is take care of that bad boy for a month, and then boom, I’m free. What do you say? We can even name it something stupid, like Meth Lab or Pepsi.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roxas looks at the calico cat and looks at Axel. There is a feeling holding mass inside of him, somewhere between love and the stranger other emotions that don’t have proper names. He puts Axel’s phone down on the coffee table and leans into his space, his head falling down against Axel’s coathanger shoulder, over which he is wearing Roxas’ Joshua Tree tee. “Maybe we’ll just lay low for a little longer,” he suggests in a low tone, closing his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Axel </span>
  <em>
    <span>hmm</span>
  </em>
  <span>s. The room is warm and toasty at the beginning of November. Tonight, they’ll eat Axel’s killer spin on instant ramen and play a first-person shooter on the PlayStation, and the additional days of Axel’s imprisonment will have meant more to them than any of the days they would have spent together before their state of mutual cursedom. It’s nice - for things to be this way even when the world is ending.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure, Roxas,” Axel says, grabbing the PlayStation controller and pulling up Netflix. “Let’s watch some </span>
  <em>
    <span>Full House</span>
  </em>
  <span> and get dinner started, eh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve got a deal,” comes Roxas’ easy reply. So it goes in this weird tale from Oblivion. The narrator hopes you enjoyed your time here.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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